


Where No Thing Gleams

by maq_moon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, Demonology, F/M, Helpful Kylo Ren, Minor Character Death, Religious Themes, here there be smut, mentions of medieval torture, pop culture references: gotta catch 'em all, putting my History degree to good use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-10-06 20:46:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20513255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maq_moon/pseuds/maq_moon
Summary: An online DNA test sends Rey on a whirlwind journey across Europe. When she hits a roadblock in her travels, the enigmatic Kylo Ren offers to solve all of her problems. The catch? She must simply go on one date with him.Or so she thought.





	1. BUDAPEST

**Author's Note:**

>   


Thirty-two documents.

The more recent biographies gave her a good idea of what the papers said, but she needed to see them for herself. She needed to see the handwriting’s slopes and curves , try to find any similarities with her own chicken scratch. It had been perversely impossible to find the documents online in their original language. Every search led her to the same few Reddit threads, which in turn led her to a book she had already read and re-read. The book’s citations had led her across the continent. She had explored castles and churches, taken guided tours, and had finally come to Budapest. It wasn’t the last stop on her pilgrimage, but it was the one with the most hard data.

The Budapest City Archives building was, Rey thought, visually disorienting. Its exterior resembled an L-shaped bloc of cheap orange brick flats with a curved white lattice in the bend to pretty it up. A frosted glass cube stood proudly near the entrance. The seemingly perpetual twilight of the city meant the glass and metal grille didn’t reflect any sun; she supposed it was cohesive enough with its mix of Soviet-era industrial and art deco elements. It felt somehow incomplete, and she was all too happy to go inside. 

Rey was instantly more content when the door closed behind her. First, she was warm. Despite it being November, she had opted to wear shorts. A knit cap was her only acknowledgement of the season, shoved atop windblown hair tied in three messy knots. The goosebumps on her legs vanished slowly. Second, the wood paneling of the walls was welcoming, even if the gray-haired woman at the desk was decidedly sour. Third, she was so close. Every step brought her closer to her documents, her past, and it lit a fire just under her heart. 

She smiled politely at the formidable woman behind the desk. Rey had learned a little Hungarian for the occasion, enough to get by politely. “A nevem Rey Nitko-- er, Nitko Rey,” she told the woman. After a brief silence, she elaborated. “Beszéltem a kurátor asszisztensével a telefonon.” She cringed at her clumsy pronunciations; even the words _ curator _ and _ telephone _sounded wrong, and she had rehearsed this simple sentence many times. The woman nodded curtly and strode away, high heels clacking. 

Alone, Rey took out her phone. She had a text from Finn. It was a picture of him eating breakfast, egg yolk dribbling down his chin. She rolled her eyes and snorted. Unconsciously she began tapping her sandaled foot to the quiet classical music playing in the lobby. She checked the time; only two minutes had gone by. Would it be rude to play Candy Crush if she silenced it? Yes, she decided, and pretended to be a Fully Functional And Responsible Adult while waiting. Five minutes, then ten went by, and she was still standing alone in the lobby, looking helpless and frustrated. How hard was it to get thirty two photocopies? Not hard. She’d done her time as an intern. She knew. Her idle hands twitched. She shot a text to Finn:_ I’m like celine dion in the 90s... All by myself. These ppl taking forever _. The “. . .” appeared immediately, but Rey stashed her phone in her oversized blue purse. She heard the heavy click-clack of high heels returning.

The gray-haired woman’s reappearance was immediately uncomfortable. She crossed her conspicuously empty arms over her chest and looked down her straight nose at Rey, meeting her eyes unflinchingly. “A kurátor elutasította a kérését,” the woman said evenly. Rey ran through the verbs she knew. _ Elutasította… _Past tense, but she didn’t know the word itself. The curator ‘unknown verbed’ your request, and the woman was empty-handed. 

Ah. 

“But I thought-- De gondoltam--” Rey protested brokenly.

“Nem érdekel. Csak csinálom a munkámat.” She sighed heavily and turned away. 

She was not a native speaker, but Rey understood a dismissal when she heard it. She wished the woman a good afternoon and made it outside before she started shaking. All that time, all that money, for nothing. She could find out almost anything about someone alive in Budapest within those walls, but ask about someone dead and she got shot down. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t fair. She’d come so far.

Sniffling, she pulled out her phone and moved to punch the Uber app before remembering that Uber was, for some reason, illegal in Hungary. She swiped to her last page of apps and was about to order a Taxify when her phone buzzed. Finn. 

_ u shouldnt have gone by urself x _

She replied:_ I had to _. This was an old argument, one neither of them could win, and she didn’t particularly feel like arguing it again now. She ordered a Taxify and sat on the curb of Teve St. She rubbed her bare legs with her hands to keep warm. It didn’t work.

She stood and began running in place to get her blood pumping. Her hat fell from her head; she didn’t bother putting it back on and just held it. There weren’t many people around at this time of the evening to see her, and those people who did notice her looked away out of secondhand embarrassment. All except one. 

He lounged against the industrial brick of the Archives, arms crossed over his chest like a vampire in a black-and-white film. His eyes were mostly closed, as if he were trying to rest but she was keeping him awake just by observing him. A light breeze mussed his dark hair, pushing long strands of it into his preternaturally pale face. One corner of his mouth twitched when he heard her curse the cold, and he chuckled when she cursed the wind.

She rounded on him furiously. “Mit akarsz?” she snarled. 

“Nothing,” he answered in English. He held his hands up in mock surrender. “I just think it’s counterintuitive to be mad at the weather.” He gestured at his own dark pea coat and red woolen scarf. “November in Buda. Fewer than three hours of sunlight a day, on average. Rain on about one in five days. Mean temperature of five and a half if you use Celsius, and judging by the accent I’d say you do.”

Rey glared at him but relaxed her posture. “Are you some kind of walking encyclopedia?”

“An informed traveler. As I travel a lot, I have to know a lot. Kylo Ren,” he said by way of introduction, extending a long, white hand, which she took.

“Rey.”

“Just Rey?”

“For now. Might change the surname soon, so I’m keeping it open,” she explained. “These bloody archivists won’t give me access to the papers I want, though, so I’ve hit a roadblock.”

Kylo held a long finger to his chin and cocked his head to the side. “I may be able to help with that.”

“Right,” she said skeptically. “And how exactly would you help?”

“Someone on the inside owes me a favor. I have some connections.”

Rey eyed him dubiously. Her gaze lingered on a jagged scar that cut over his right eye and down to his neck. She couldn’t tell its age; it was somewhere between the white of permanently healed tissue and the purple tissue that promises to diminish with time. “Uh-huh. Why would you cash in this favor for me, a random girl you met on the street?” 

He shrugged. “It seems important to you. And you remind me of someone I once knew.”

Rey pursed her lips and put a hand on her hip. “No one does something for nothing. What would you want in return?”

A long silence passed between them. Her eyes stayed glued to his lips, waiting for him to say something disgusting. “The pleasure of your company will do. There is a place on Váci Street, Café Gerbeaud. Meet me there tomorrow at noon.”

“I want the papers before I commit to anything,” she bargained. 

“Naturally,” Kylo replied. “What are they, incidentally?”

She hesitated. “The Báthory letters. There are thirty-two of them.”

“You’ll have them first thing in the morning. A courier will bring them. All you have to do is sign.”

It was too much, too easy, too fast. It couldn’t be real. She hesitated for just a moment. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Well, either you’ll have the letters or you won’t. In the first case, you’ll meet me for lunch. In the second case, you’re no better or worse than you are now. Do you want the originals or photocopies?”

“Wait, what? You’re trying to tell me that you could get the actual Báthory letters? Bullshit.”

“Just hypothetically. If given the option, would you prefer the originals or photocopies?”

“That’s a weird hypothetical,” Rey pointed out. “Er, I’d have to say photocopies, because the Archives can take better care of the originals than I could. Right?”

“Fair point,” Kylo said. “Now, just so we’re clear--” he gesticulated fervently the further he delved into their plan “--I will obtain photocopies of the thirty-two Báthory letters, which will be delivered to you via courier. You will sign for them. In exchange, I get your company.”

“Café Gerbeaud, noon,” Rey repeated. “Oh crap, my Uber, er, Taxify is here.” As she wrangled her frozen limbs into the yellow car, she called out, “Hope to see you tomorrow!” He gave her a traditional British salute.

\------

She paid the driver with a combination of euros and forints, which seemed to irritate him.

She wasn’t put off by his negativity, though. No, she was positively glowing. Her heart beat arrhythmically in her chest and lightning filled her blood. This was it. She would have the papers. The hard data, the stuff books were made of, would be in her hands tomorrow morning. And all she had to do in return was have lunch in a nice place with someone who seemed pretty cool, if pretentious. Honestly, it was all a little too good to be true, which usually meant something was seriously wrong. She felt almost as though she had entered into a Faustian bargain, though she couldn’t say from where the feeling came.

Smiling, Rey settled under her hotel bed’s heavy comforter . She plugged her phone into the wall and opened an app that sounded like a cat purring for some white noise. She curled up on her side and drifted to sleep.

Her last thought was the cold realization that Kylo hadn’t asked where she was staying.

\------

Rey didn’t dream. Ever. She never had. She had assumed that was common. When she found out it wasn’t she hadn’t wasted time worrying about it. She went on living her life because she couldn’t miss what she’d never had. She’d never had the letters, so she shouldn’t miss them. But she did.

This was different. Dreams were intangible. You could dream about being a piece of fruit in a ballgown. Dreams weren’t things you could put in your hands and use to learn about yourself. Dreams were essentially useless. The Báthory letters weren’t intangible or useless. They might be about crops and livestock, but they were a part of the past. Her past. And she missed them like one would miss a limb. 

If there was no acquiring them, she would do what she had always done: endure. She had nearly two days left in Budapest. She would make the most of them.

She made sure to wear jeans and trainers. It was morning, but it still looked like a cloudy day had yet to break. Her phone told her it was four degrees outside, so she wound an infinity scarf around her neck twice and tucked her hair into it. She pulled a dramatic face and sent a selfie to Finn with the caption _ DESPERATE. _

She resolved to go to Leopold Town and see St. Stephen’s Basilica. She mouthed the words quietly, _ Szent István-bazilika, _trying to get the feel of them before she tried speaking them to a native. “Sent eesht-vahn bah-zi-li-kah.” Rey said it over and over, three times fast, until she could pronounce it flawlessly, she hoped. She winked at herself in the mirror as she ordered a Taxify. Throwing her purse over her shoulder, she headed into the poorly-lit hallway.

A nondescript man was approaching from the opposite direction. She kept her eyes down, but he was laser-focused on her. When she tried to brush past him in the narrow corridor, he sidestepped to block her. She stepped right; he blocked her. She stepped left; he blocked her. Unsure if he spoke English, Rey took him by the arms and turned him bodily. Problem solved. He tapped her shoulder.

Later, Rey would not be able to remember what the man looked like. Normal, probably. He’d be less forgettable if there had been something remarkable about him. It galled her to not remember who handed her the packet of letters. It was such an important moment; she would always remember that she was wearing pink fingerless gloves in a hotel with worn brown carpet and striped wallpaper, but she would never remember a thing about the courier.

“Rey Nitko? Sign here,” he said evenly. She wouldn’t remember the timbre or cadence of his voice. “Full name, if you please.” She wouldn’t remember if he was polite or brusque. She wouldn’t remember if he had a light or heavy accent or if, like Kylo, he had none at all. “Mr. Ren wishes me to remind you of your agreement. He looks forward to seeing you.” Rey wouldn’t remember him telling her goodbye, turning, and walking past the lift. She would only remember that someone handed her an envelope of letters and that she signed for them. 

She tore back into her room. The clock read 9:32. She had plenty of time to look over a few letters before going to lunch. Her shaking fingers slid along the sealed end of the large manila envelope. A speck of red appeared and she yanked her hand away; even a drop of blood from a paper cut felt sacreligious. Her phone buzzed against her side and she realized she still wore her purse. And scarf. And gloves. And coat.

She divested herself of her winter-wear, pointedly ignored her phone, and grabbed a piece of hotel stationary. She took a few steadying breaths and wrote.

_ A courier brought me the Báthory letters, as promised. Excited doesn’t begin to cover it. Going to try to use as many letters as possible, big and small words, to analyze and compare handwriting. I already wrote ‘letters’ twice. Oops. Now three times. I think I need to do sentences so that it’s more collected. If I just wrote badger, badger, badger, badger, mushroom, a snake! It doesn’t really give much variety or show my style. Well I did the stupid thing anyway, smh. Text speak will obviously not help, either. Hmm… A monologue or something? Or song lyrics? Monologue. I still remember some R&J from uni, I think. Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical! Dove-feathered raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seemst, a damned saint, an honourable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell, when thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend in moral paradise of such sweet flesh? Enough Shakespeare, that should be plenty of words to work with. I just need a signature. I probably should do it the Hungarian way. _

_ Love ya, _

_ Nitko Rey _

She looked at the almost-full page of stationary, then at the envelope with its single drop of blood. Timorously she pulled a single leaf from its depths, a random act that would cause anxiety no matter the shape of the words. She closed her eyes and took what was possibly her last breath as Rey Nobody.

Her sentences curved up, then back down to nearly the same height as where they began. The lowercase _ y _ of the signature was sharp, taking an almost ninety degree turn to point to the right. The uppercase _ G _ was shaped like a large lowercase one, loopy and with an open side. There was a slight curlique on the left side of the lowercase _ d _ . Capital _ E _ s were more like backward _ 3 _s. Rey had been criticized for these things and more since she was a child.

The missive from the envelope began further right than was typical. The Báthory letter had sentences that curved up, then back down to the same height as where they had begun. The lowercase _y_ of the signature was sharp, taking a ninety degree turn to point to the right. The uppercase _G_s were shaped like large lowercase ones, loopy and with open sides. There was a slight curlique on the left side of the lowercase _d_. The Cyrillic _E _looked oddly like a backward _3_.

It was by no means identical, but these little similarities shook Rey. She simply stared at the copy of the Countess’s letter, mouth slightly open. She couldn’t read contemporary Hungarian very well, so she had no chance with fifteenth-to-sixteenth century Hungarian. What the document said wasn’t the point. She had read all of the translations: the 32 letters were requests for aid or advice, concerns about crops and livestock. They were what one would expect from the second most powerful person in an empire five hundred years ago. It was the aesthetic of the writing, the shape of the pen strokes, that spoke to Rey. Those things connected her to the past. They gave her belonging.

She hadn’t realized she had set an alarm. _ LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN! _ blared repeatedly until she turned it off. She had a text from Finn, a series of unintelligible emojis. She shrugged and ordered a car to take her to the metro, folding the white envelope carefully and tucking it into her purse. She re-dressed in her winter gear and set off for Café Gerbeaud.

\------

Traversing through the Inner City was an experience. First, Rey didn’t know if she was in Buda or Óbuda or Pest (though she suspected the latter). She walked in the biting cold along city squares full of high-end shops and theaters and cafés. Statues were everywhere, a veritable menagerie of animals and persons unknown. She noticed a number of tourist stops just off the metro in Vörösmarty tér, so she picked up a few postcards and knick-knacks. 

Café Gerbeaud was absolutely decadent. The outside was a bright, shimmering white that Rey recognized as Gründerzeit architecture. Five storeys of gleaming glass and white columns reflected the weak November light, intensifying it by an order of magnitude. Rey tried to imagine it in summertime, with the shrubbery and trees full and green. She tossed a coin in a fountain of a stone lion spouting water. She didn’t make a wish for fear it might come true. 

Pulling out her aging camera, she snapped a few pictures. Kylo found her lying on the ground as she was trying to get an interesting angle of the fourth and fifth floors. They both fell into peals of laughter. He offered his hand and pulled her up easily.

“Having fun?” he asked.

“Oodles,” she replied, grinning. A light breeze whipped her hair into her eyes.

“Let’s get some chocolate.”

They were seated on the second floor. Rey’s eyes were wide and her brows furrowed at the same time. She gripped her menu until her knuckles were white. This was Rococo. Why do the outside in Gründerzeit if you’re going to do the inside in Rococo? Gilt ceilings with crystal chandeliers, warm wooden chairs with russet upholstery, viridian marble floors and tables-- everything screamed pre-revolutionary France. 

“You look distracted,” Kylo said.

Rey snorted. “That was a really nice way to put frustrated-slash-confused.”

“May I ask what has you frustrated-slash-confused?”

“Architecture. Inside, Rococo. Outside, Gründerzeit. Why? Why mix Germanic industrialism with literally the fanciest French architecture ever? Both styles are beautiful. Just pick one. Stay in your lane.”

“It’s my understanding that the building existed as is, then Gerbaud bought it and decorated it to his taste.”

“No,” Rey argued, “you do not get to do that. Gründerzeit is perfectly lovely. Don’t add stuff. It makes a mess. Or at least have a transition.”

Kylo smiled, hiding behind his menu. “If no one adds, how do they grow? We have to stand on existing foundations. What’s the quote? We’re standing on the shoulders of giants?”

“That’s people, not--” Rey narrowed her eyes. “You’re baiting me.” 

He laughed in earnest. “Guilty. Are you an architect?”

She stuck out her tongue and unwound her infinity scarf, but opted to keep her cap on. “No. I did graphic design, which meant about six billion architecture lessons. It turned into a passion.”

Kylo smiled, a lazy, Cheshire thing that belonged to the cat who caught the canary. “There are less virtuous passions.”

“Virtuous?” Rey asked, eyebrows raising. “I believe that’s the first time anyone’s ever described architecture that way. But, yeah, I get you. Compared to the other arts, it’s downright virginal.”

“Inherently has more integrity,” Kylo supplied. “Structural.”

“That was a terrible pun and you should feel terrible.”

“Consider me chastened.”

“You will be forgiven in due time,” she said magnanimously. “Tell me things about yourself. Where you’re from, what you do, that sort of thing. It’s your penance.”

“Believe it or not, I’m originally from Iran. I come from a rather prolific family. Mom’s an angel, Dad not so much. I’m a philanthropist by trade.”

“Hence your willingness to help a stranger.”

“Yes. Why the Báthory letters, by the way?”

“Later,” Rey promised. “You’re still making up for your bad pun. Do you live here? Where’d you go to uni? You’re my mysterious benefactor, and those are cool in books, but the mystery isn’t appealing in real life. People are more interesting than phantoms.”

“That’s very true. I never went to university. My family connections made it a non-issue. Do enough for the right people and honorary degrees come your way.” He shrugged. “I do live here, but not always. I have other places in Eastern Europe, the UK, the US, one in Guatemala, plus the family holdings. Tell me about the Báthory letters.”

“You just _ casually dropped _ that you own half the world and you want to know my tiny thing?”

He laughed, rich and deep. “My life is mundane to me; I live it every day.”

“Fair. So, off topic, is everything here delicious or is there something specific you’d rec?” 

They feasted on crepes, rich candies, and sumptuous cakes for the better part of two hours, laughing and making puns and talking about nothing. Before she realized it, Rey was outside, having finished her brunch. She did a double-take, mouth agape, and pointed an accusing, if good-natured, finger at Kylo.

“You’re a djinn. I know it.”

“What wishes did I grant?” Kylo asked, tucking her arm into the crook of his elbow. She let him, and they strolled in the misty afternoon along Vörösmarty tér.

“You got my letters, the world’s best chocolate, and we popped out of there without paying the bill. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He smirked and snatched the cap from the top of her head. “You never wished for any of that.”

“That’s true,” she agreed, leaning against him slightly. She inhaled deeply. The smell of him, the light press of his body… it seemed familiar. Comfortable. 

“Plus, the bill has been paid. Will you tell me about the Báthory letters now?”

“You, sir,” Rey said, “are as persistent and patient as a predator.”

Kylo chuckled, considering. “Patient as a predator. I like the phrase, but isn’t it supposed to be a saint?”

“You haven’t the look of one. No halo.”

“Here I thought it was the scar.”

“Nah, scars are mysterious and sexy. It’s the lack of a halo.”

Kylo shook his head a little, a gentle breeze stirring dead leaves around their feet. “You’re deflecting. If you don’t want to tell me, you can just say so. I’ll back off.”

Rey frowned. She wouldn’t have the letters at all without Kylo, but she wanted them to herself a bit longer. She wanted to look at the other thirty-one and compare all of those to her writing, and to each other. Did the script change as the Countess aged and grew in madness? She wanted to memorize the letters, such as they were, as best she could, before she shared them. Yet Kylo was part of the story now. She kept their arms linked, kept walking, and watched her feet.

“My parents died when I was very little. I was put in a children’s home, but I was only there a few weeks before they found a relative. A fat old man, uncle two times removed or something like that. Dad’s side. He took me, and that’s about the nicest thing I can say. He never mistreated me, but I think that’s because he’d have to have paid attention to do so. I was a burden to him, and he was strict. Weird about certain things. I couldn’t call him by his name, for example. I had to call him ‘Uncle’. Being four or so, my _ l _ s and _ r _s weren’t great, so it came out like ‘Unkar’. He hated it, but it stuck. He was a doomsday-prepper, so any surplus goods went to storage. He’d bury money in the back garden rather than get me new shoes for school. I’d just dig up the money and buy shoes. He never noticed. He made it very clear he wouldn’t help me go to uni, so I had to work a lot. Got some scholarships. Got my degree and some debt to go with it. Finn, my best mate, got me started on this path. He’d been given up at birth and was doing a bunch of genealogy stuff. He found some records and it turns out his father never knew about him, so they talk. I figured, well, if I want more family than Unkar, I need to do the same stuff Finn did. But both of my parents were only children. I ordered one of those kits where you spit in a tube and send it to the Internet, then they tell you possible links, and so on. Well, my spit tube and the following fuckery led me to Countess Báthory. Mum’s side. You can imagine my reaction: nothing. I hadn’t heard of her.

“So I Googled her. Jesus Christ, you can’t un-read the things she was accused of. Sticking pins through girls’ mouths, burning the soles of their feet, dousing them in freezing water, beating them with cudgels, sticking hot pokers in their-- Well. And stories about her taking baths in tubs of the blood of virgins were everywhere. I’m apparently related to history’s craziest serial killer. But then I read books about her, not just Internet stuff, and it looked sort of different. Like she was an abuser, but not a killer. And I said to myself, I’m going to investigate. And I replied to myself, with what money?

“Then I turned twenty-three. A solicitor phoned me soon after my birthday about my trust. I was like, I have a trust? Unkar knew and forgot to tell me. He couldn’t touch it, and I couldn’t until I hit twenty-three, so it was useless to him. It was for... a fair bit. I wasn’t so much happy to have money as I was happy knowing my parents had thought about my future. But it wasn’t from my parents. It was from my mum’s parents. There had been a clause in their wills that my mother could receive no money from the trust; she got nothing from them. And that’s when I learned what type of people my parents really were. My maternal grandparents petitioned for custody when I was three weeks old. They died together not long after: my grandfather had an aneurysm while they were on the motorway. My parents died within a few months of each other; it was heroin for both of them. 

“Anyway, the trust. It would have covered most of my debt, but I was kind of in shock about all of this stuff I’d learned. I mean, you can read that Mummy died in June and Daddy in October, but not necessarily the _ how _of it. That takes extra digging. I was just so grateful for these people who never really knew me, that they would choose to give me some of their savings in the hope that I would have a better life than my mother. And I thought, I want to know more about these people. I’d focused on Dad’s side because I had a surname and one relative to go by. Now I had these two really kind people. So I went back to my Internet spit research and went up that other branch. When I first started seeing fancy titles, I got a giddy sort of ‘lost princess’ feeling. Then you do a search and… yeah. Your illustrious ancestor stabbed girls’ hands if they didn’t sew fast enough. But I needed to see her letters. I’ve read the translations and it’s all really mundane stuff about farming and ‘holy crap what about this uprising’, but that’s not the point. I want to know how similar I am to any ancestor I can dig up-- so to speak. So the letters are handwriting analysis. Even though we don’t use the same language, the stroke of a brush or pen is a universal thing, yeah? It’s art. I wanted to see if our art was anything alike. And it is. And I’m really excited about it, though I feel like it should terrify me.”

Kylo nodded along in silence as she spoke. He betrayed no pity, if he felt any, and kept his posture the same. It was comforting, the steadying silence, the measured footsteps. Rey fancied that his heart beat in time with his footfalls, slow and heavy. She lay her head against his arm bashfully. He smiled a soft smile, so different from the feline grin he had worn two hours prior, and inhaled slowly through his nose. The noise of the city was a faint buzz in her ears.

She was content. 

\------

_ Txt when u land peanut x _

_ Have a safe flight, Rey. _

_ Let us know when you get there ✿◡✿ _


	2. SLOVAKIA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a few intentional linguistic discrepancies in this chapter. Csejte is Hungarian while Čachtice is Slovakian. I did this because Čachtice is a modern city while Csejte is what the Countess called the castle. The Latin prayers (Pater Noster et Ave Maria) are scrambled up at one point. This, too, is intentional. There are two spelling errors in one paragraph; this is because it is a direct quote and no proper historian would cite improperly!

The ground was muddier than Rey had anticipated.

She had studied topographical maps, both from Wikipedia and Google Earth. She still wasn’t quite prepared for the Lesser Carpathians.

Hiking boots would have been an excellent choice, she mused. As it was, she slid a half step back for every two she took forward in her nicest, most expensive trainers. The knees of her jeans were covered in muck, a mixture of smeared mud and clay and skat and other forest detritus. Twigs and branches snagged her jacket and caught her heavy backpack. She suspected that she had blood on one or both of her palms from grasping the skeletal trees’ rough bark . She looked upward, not at the sky or the horizon, but in-between, where she thought her destination’s shadow loomed.

There were no lights, nor would there be. No electricity ran to Csejte vára-- Countess Báthory’s castle and place of death. Rey had picked the nights of a new and near-new moon for her time in the village of Čachtice, Slovakia. The castle was a bit of a hike from the village, so light pollution wouldn’t be a problem either.

Castle Csejte should, by Rey’s calculations, be five-eighths of a mile north-northwest. She kept a travel size flashlight in her teeth, leaving her hands free to take purchase on trees. She took the slope at an angle, placing her feet almost perpendicular to the grade. She heard the occasional call of a night bird or wild dog over her own grunts, branches rustling from their inhabitants over the sound of her feet snapping their fallen kin, and that eerie gasp of breath the west wind makes when it blows through the mountains. The force of a gust knocked her sideways, careening into a gnarled oak. The flashlight fell from her mouth and rolled down, down, until its promise of illumination was broken. Frustrated, Rey settled against the oak and slipped her neon orange backpack from her shoulders. There were four more flashlights inside, and plenty of batteries. With one foot firmly in place against a large root, Rey groped blindly for the zipper. 

She must have accidentally turned on one of her backup flashlights, because there was an unanticipated bright spot in her left eye. The suddenness of it sent a shooting pain through her head, and she pressed the heel of her palm to her eye. 

It all happened as if through a fog. She felt her knees hit the ground. She saw her hands fly to catch her, but they didn’t _ feel _like her hands and they didn’t do any catching. She rolled until roots and branches and stones caught her. As soon as her body stopped, Rey looked up.

She saw stars through the trees and felt something sharp hit her head. Then she didn’t see or feel anything at all. 

\------

A match was struck. 

Next to where she lay in bed, Rey saw the tiny fire being put to a greater use. Two gnarled hands coaxed the wick of an old-fashioned oil lamp to glow brightly. The calloused fingers turned a squeaky knob on the lamp, adjusting the flame. She knew those firelit hands. They had brought her comfort from time to time, though not always when she needed it, and almost never when she asked for it.

“Luke,” she rasped. 

Her old friend didn’t smile. Father Skywalker wasn’t particularly jovial, though she had heard that he was much happier in his youth. Hopeful. She often teased him that he would be a lady killer if he’d shave and smile. That made him frown, which made her laugh. One day in a hundred, he’d laugh with her.

Silently, Luke passed her a glass of tepid water. She gulped it loudly, so he brought her a second, then a third. He was already at home in her hotel room, a duffel bag of moth-eaten clothes thrown by the bathroom door and a stack of books by the lone chair in the corner. That was fine, of course. She’d known Luke for years, they were friends, she didn’t care if he bunked with her. But hadn’t he said…

“You shouldn’t have come.”

Rey swallowed thickly. “I had to. I had to find out about her.”

“You can find out everything you need to know,” Luke snapped, “in books.” He thumped his fingers on his pile of tomes for emphasis.

“I don’t want to fight with you about this again,” Rey sighed.

Luke adjusted her blankets and felt her forehead with the back of his hand. Sitting, he folded his hands in his lap and stared at nothing. “You’re not going to like who you find.”

“I can’t imagine she’s worse than the stories say. It’s almost impossible. And if she is, then she is. I want to know where-- who-- I came from, no matter how ugly.”

“You’re not going to like who you find,” he repeated. 

Rey felt a shooting pain lance her eye, just like when… 

“Luke,” she said slowly, “how did you get here?”

He looked through her. “You brought me. And if you aren’t careful, you’ll bring something back.”

\------

Rey woke up. 

Dreaming, she decided, was terrible, and she was resolved to never do it again.

Her head still spun, but her eye didn’t ache. Her bedside lamp’s dim light was just enough to let her examine the spiderweb-thin cracks on the hotel ceiling. She briefly registered being in her torn and damp clothes from the mountainside. She was cold and thirsty, and there was no Luke to bring her water or tuck her in. The green numbers of the clock read 23:32.

That couldn’t be right. That meant she had made her way back from the mountain, disoriented and without a light, and had been asleep long enough to have her first and only dream, within the span of a few hours. Or was it tomorrow now? Had some kindly local found her and brought her back to the village? That made time for transportation and terrible dreams. But it didn’t make sense. Nothing felt real except the cold and the rawness of her throat. 

“Would you like some tea?”

Rey stopped breathing and looked for little inconsistencies-- dream things. No oil lamp this time, just a man who had no business being there. She had shared vague ideas about her journey, but nothing concrete. No city, no hotel, no details were shared. Details. There was a phrase Luke liked to use about details. Devils and details. 

“Are you the devil?” she croaked, parched and half-delirious.

Kylo laughed, a dark and delicious sound that reminded her of Café Gerbeaud’s chocolate. “No, Rey, I’m not the devil. I’m still not a djinn. I am, at present, your cupbearer, and I come bearing substandard hotel tea. Drink. You’re probably going to want to change your clothes, too, once you’re steady on your feet.”

She almost let the tea fall from her mouth back into its chipped cup. “This is substandard.” She gulped it down anyway, letting its heat soothe her scratchy throat. 

Rey glanced up at Kylo. He was crammed into the room’s one chair, legs akimbo, reading intently. “Don’t look at me,” she warned. “I’m going to change.” Kylo stood and turned the chair so that it faced the corner, then re-positioned himself with a grunt. She watched him read, counting how long it took him to get through one page; she noted his posture, the angle of his head. Then, facing him, she began to undress. The better to catch him if he tries to peek, she reasoned.

“What are you reading?”

“Jane Eyre.”

“Seriously?” she asked incredulously. Her sweater fell to the floor. “That’s like… chick lit.”

“No such thing,” Kylo countered. “Literature is literature.”

“That book always pissed me off.” Belt off, torn jeans unbuttoned and unzipped.

“Why?”

“Because Jane is hyped as this feminist, not trying to impress men and running away from two marriage proposals, but then she marries Rochester at the end anyway.” She stood in her underwear, shivering. 

“There’s actually a reason for that.”

Rey snorted as she slipped her bra straps from her shoulders. “True love?”

“Hardly. In Bronte’s day, a woman getting married at the end meant that she was a good person. If Jane hadn’t married Rochester, it would have meant that she was inherently flawed or evil. It’s a reflection of her character, not her feelings.”

“That’s dumb.” She kicked away her knickers.

“It’s just how things were done.”

Feeling dizzy, or maybe coy, and definitely stupid, Rey decided to test Kylo. “You can turn around now.”

“Not unless you’re a djinn who magically conjured new clothes.” 

“Good answer. And good hearing.” She turned and walked to her suitcase, confident that Kylo would keep his eyes on his book. She took out a pair of thick fleece pajamas and pulled them on quickly. “For real this time,” she declared. Kylo hesitated. “I promise.”

Head bowed just in case, he stood and turned his chair. He only lifted his gaze when he caught sight of her covered ankle. Their eyes locked for a moment; she looked away first.

“Lie down,” he instructed her quietly.

“Excuse me?”

“Not like that. I want to check your pupils, make sure you’re not concussed. You took a knock on the head and shouldn’t be up anyway. I’m not going to try anything.”

“Oh,” she said softly. “Okay.” Rey lay on her bed atop the coarse duvet. Kylo sat near her waist and leaned over her, holding open one eye and then the other. He frowned slightly.

“Your pupils are awfully large, but they’re both the same size. Get some sleep. In the morning, if you still have symptoms, we’ll need to call a doctor.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to sleep with a concussion,” Rey said.

“Common misconception.”

“Okay.”

“Is it alright if I watch over you tonight? In case something happens?”

“Yeah. I’ll call the desk and see if they can send up a cot or whatever.” She moved towards the phone, groping to no avail.

“No need. I don’t sleep much.”

“Vampire,” Rey sleepily accused.

“Can’t I just be human?”

“Too pretty,” she mumbled, twisting the blankets around herself like a cocoon. “All the monsters are pretty.”

\------ 

Rey clipped an extra flashlight to her belt and pulled tight the laces of her new hiking boots. Her backpack was still perhaps too heavy, and she still had a slight headache from her tumble the night prior, but she only had a few days left in Čachtice. It was now or never.

A light rain began to fall as she climbed the mountain to Castle Csejte in the late afternoon. She grit her teeth and continued working her way up at an angle, more slowly this time. The scrapes on her palms were stinging as they reopened and scratched against bark and stone. It was difficult, and she slipped more than once, but she could see the summit, and her heart burned. Stones from the castle’s glory days littered the mountainside. She was extra cautious of those, stepping around them almost respectfully.

_ This is it _ , she thought. _ I’m going to see Erzsébet Báthory’s famed fortress. I’ll be standing where she stood, where Ferenc Nádasdy and his predecessors stood. I’ll be in the very place where György Thurzó confronted the woman he was tasked to protect and bricked her up inside her room until she died. _

Her breaths were heavier, shorter. The sound of her blood pumping rushed in her ears. Every nerve was on fire, every hair standing on end. She was pure electricity.

A twig snapped behind her. Rey spun, and the weight of her backpack caused her to keep spinning until she was on her hands and knees.

“You could just take the tour,” Kylo said dryly.

“You scared the life out of me!” Rey hissed. “Help me up.” As soon as she got her bearings, she punched him on the shoulder. He flinched and groaned but didn’t speak. A strong wind blew in from the west, stealing Rey’s knit hat and sending it into the twining branches of a nearby ash. “Why did you follow me?” she demanded.

“So I wouldn’t have to worry about you falling down a mountain again.”

“Okay, not that I’m ungrateful, but how the fuck did you find me yesterday? I didn’t tell you I was coming here.” 

“We’re near a tourist site-- again, one that has tours. There are trails in the mountains. I was walking a trail, admittedly later than was wise, and saw a flashlight roll down. I investigated. Then I found you.”

“So, what, I’m supposed to believe that it’s a coincidence that the person who got me the Countess’s letters magically appears at her castle when I need help? It doesn’t sound weird to you?” Her hands were balled into fists and she stood on tiptoe. 

Kylo sighed. “What’s the alternative? That I put a GPS in your arm back in Buda? That I’m actually MI6 or CIA and you’re a government target? Or, and I think this is the most likely one, I have holdings in the area and our discussions prompted me to come see the sights. Sometimes things just happen. If coincidences didn’t occur, we wouldn’t have a word for them.”

“Oh,” was all Rey said. Her anger receded slowly. “You do own half of Eastern Europe, don’t you? I’d forgotten that.”

“I’ll blame it on lingering head trauma.”

“How magnanimous of you.”

They stared one another down, unflinching. The woods came alive around them, but they stood still as statues, each waiting for the other to break first.

Rey sneezed. 

They laughed, loud and free, and suddenly they were comrades-in-arms. All was forgiven, if there had been anything to forgive, and it was time to continue the quest. 

“Really, though,” Kylo said. “You could just take the tour.”

Rey scoffed. “No. It wouldn’t be the same, would it? Shuffling around with a bunch of strangers, reading placards every now and then… That’s not why I’m here. This is my history, my family. I don’t want to share it with a bunch of dicks who think she took baths in blood. That’s scientifically impossible and historically inaccurate. I want to stand where my family stood. I want to share a space with them, Ferenc and Erzsébet, without tourists. Am I making sense?”

Kylo nodded slowly. “Breaking in the front after closing would be a lot easier than climbing a mountain, don’t you think?”

Inwardly, she felt a rush of relief. He understood. Someone understood. Even her dearest friends hadn’t grasped her need to come. But this man, a stranger, understood. 

“Not gonna lie, I considered that. But the Internet doesn’t tell me anything about their security detail and has plenty on the surrounding topography. I’m outdoorsy, so I figured the mountain was a better option than just walking up to the gate. Besides, I’d need to do recon to figure out what kind of bolt cutters to bring. Pro tip: make sure you’ve got all your breaking and entering tools before you start the break-in.”

“Dare I ask?”

“Nah, it turned out okay. For me, anyway. I was a skinny girl who looked younger than she was. All I had to do was dodge a little and cry at the right time.”

“And the person it didn’t turn out okay for?”

“Oh, Devi? She got the words KILL REY tattooed on her knuckles and does a thousand press-ups a night to stay in shape for the epic fight we’ll have if we ever meet again.”

“So tell me more about the castle we’re invading,” Kylo said.

Rey faltered. She took a long drink of water. “I don’t know much about the castle itself, really. It was built in the 1200s. It was originally Romanesque, but after a few hundred years it got some Gothic upgrades. The residence was U-shaped, which wasn’t typical of either architectural style. Ferenc Nádasdy gave it to Erzsébet for their wedding, because that’s what rich people do, I guess. She was marrying below her station, which is why she kept her name. After Ferenc died, everyone called her Lady Widow Nádasdy, which seems weird since that had never been her surname. She didn’t actually move her court here until later in life. This is the really famous castle, though, because it’s where everyone thinks all the murder happened. There are so many contradictions in accounts, though, and political crap. It makes you wonder how much of it’s true.”

“What do you mean?”

They balanced each other as they climbed, steadied one another. Rey clicked on her flashlight as twilight descended.

“Well, there were obviously dead girls. But there were three servants executed for their murders, and one already dead servant was basically said to be the ringleader. And the emperor-slash-king owes Erzsébet a ton of money for funding his wars, so it would be really convenient to get her out of the way. When the investigator, this dude Thurzó who was a relative and had sworn to Ferenc that he’d care for the fam, tells the emperor that there’s no way he can execute the Countess, the emperor is like ‘I need you to do this again but this time I want the answer to be execution’. So he has _another _investigation done, which yields the same result. She was also very not-Catholic, which Mr. Holy Roman Emperor had a problem with. There’s this theory that the whole thing was a Habsburg conspiracy, and it has valid points.”

The crunching of leaves and sticks beneath their feet collided with the songs of nightbirds. 

“But?” Kylo prompted.

“But there were enough girls that priests literally called her out in church during services. Even if she didn’t participate, she had to know. Right?”

Kylo shrugged. “It’s not my area of expertise.” Rey snorted and swatted at him. “If you insist, then yes, I agree.”

“Do you actually agree or are you saying what you know I want to hear?”

“Both in equal measures,” he admitted.

“Here-- stop!” Rey unzipped her backpack and pulled out a small pair of binoculars. “I’m going into a tree. Spot me.”

“Are you crazy?” Kylo exclaimed.

Rey already had a leg and both arms in an ancient maple. “If I am, I come by it honestly. Just catch me if I fall.”

Somehow, she felt he would.

\------ 

Rey slowly led Kylo onto a wide expanse, flat and dusty, a few hundred meters from the castle proper. Practically tingling, she bounced on the balls of her feet. “Ready?” 

“Rey,” he said slowly, “Did we climb a goddamn mountain and end up in the parking lot?”

“You make it sound like that _ wasn’t _the plan.”

“Why didn’t we just drive?!”

“Because we would have left a car and the staff would be like, ‘Oh, whose car is that? Can’t go home until all the tourists have gone’. You may also have noticed I don’t have a car.” She was grinning ear-to-ear. “I had to approach from an angle and elevation to spot security. I told you, there’s nothing online about it. But look-- there’s no night watchman or anything! And I don’t have to scale any walls! Come on. Only… I’d like to enter alone.”

“I understand.” He sighed from exhaustion, shaking his head.

“Knew you would.” She winked at him cheekily before turning to face the entrance.

To call this pile of stones a doorway would be to liken a puddle to the sea. Still, Rey felt a sense of importance at this quasi-barrier. She straightened her spine, cleared her throat, and even tucked back wild strands of hair. She stood at the threshold a long time, one hand reaching slightly forward as if to grasp a doorknob that was never there. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her right foot. No going back. She brazenly crossed into Castle Csejte. No more than half a meter than where she had been ten seconds ago, she was different. She wasn’t Rey Nitko. She barked out a short laugh; it had been very funny in a painful sort of way when she had found out what her surname meant. _ Nobody _ . How, she wondered, did her family go from being the most powerful in the Holy Roman Empire to literal nobodies? It didn’t matter right now. Right now, she wasn’t a Nitko; she was a Báthory, a Nádasdy, and it felt good. It was good to be a somebody. _ Thank God for mysterious grandparents and Internet DNA tests _.

She breathed in the cold, damp November air and waved to Kylo. He was part of this, too. First the letters, then the life-saving, then the reluctant mountain climbing. She was lucky to have met him. It suddenly occurred to her that she had been neglecting her phone; she smiled and decided she didn’t care.

With Kylo at her side, Rey weaved her way through the decrepit castle. Seismic activity had been rough on it, and time had done its share of damage. The once-great fortress was uninspiring to most, a pile of falling rough rocks. There was no upper level, no authentic lower level, just the sad leftovers of a slowly ticking clock. Rey thought it the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

She walked with purpose, one hand skimming the ancient stones, the other tucked snugly in Kylo’s. She put her flashlight in her mouth and opened a Google Earth map of the area. Examining it quickly, she determined a course and followed it. “I’m trying to find what may have been her prison tower. The Death Tower, some call it,” Rey explained.

“Tell me something,” she said seriously as they meandered along.

“What would you like me to say?” he asked.

“Something interesting about you, your childhood. You know all about mine.”

“My childhood? There’s nothing good there.”

“Then just something interesting.”

He thought for a moment. “I don’t like hats.”

“That’s an idiosyncrasy, not an interesting fact.”

“Uh… I once lost a fight over a woman because of fish.”

Rey stopped in her tracks for a single second. “Tell me more.”

Kylo’s Cheshire grin returned. “You asked for an interesting fact, not an interesting story.”

“You take things so literally! Come on, please?”

“Nope.”

“Pretty please?”

“Well, in that case… it has to do with the fact that I really fucking hate the smell of fish.”

“Did the other person throw a fish at you? Please tell me someone threw a fish.”

“Why don’t you tell me more about this castle?”

“Ferenc’s parents lived here and actually loved each other. Super cute. Ferenc was called the Black Knight, which makes me think of Monty Python every time I read it. Blah blah, he died, the Countess died later, the end. Did someone throw a fish?”

He shook his head, exasperated. “No one threw a fish.”

“Drat. Ah! I think we’re here.”

To anyone’s eyes but hers, they had arrived at a curved pile of stones ready to fall at a touch. Rey saw something else. She saw a gleaming tapestry, the gray rock and dead greenery blending together to form a forgotten art. She saw, as the rain slowed and the clouds parted, the warm outline of a home. She gently brushed the fingers of her left hand against that home, slick and cold, and it made her feel warm. Closing her eyes, she saw even more. She saw Ferenc’s parents, an uncommonly loving couple, doting on their son. She saw Erzsébet raising her own children, possibly shoo-ing the nursemaid from time to time and playing with them herself. She saw a family.

She smiled.

Sitting, she got into her backpack and took out her camping supplies: a thin pillow, two blankets that reflected body heat, and an extra pair of heavy clothes to wear atop what she was already dressed in. She laid everything before her with great care before getting her provisions. Canteens, dried food, and a Red Bull were placed gently beside her pillow. She made sure the flashlight was still clipped to her belt, put the one she had been using on her pillow, and pulled on the extra sweatshirt. 

“Oh, crap,” she said. “Kylo, we didn’t bring anything for you. Er, I have two blankets, but only the one pillow…”

“It’s fine,” he assured her. He took off his coat and balled it up. “See? Makeshift pillow.”

“But now you’ll be even colder.”

He exhaled a short laugh. “I don’t really get cold. And I still have my scarf.”

Rey eyed him dubiously. “It’s November in Slovakia at night and you took off your coat. You will absolutely be cold. I’m cold now.”

“Then maybe we should use those Mylar blankets. If they’re good enough for astronauts, they’re good enough for me.”

Rey giggled and handed a folded blanket to Kylo. It crinkled loudly in the quiet night as he unfolded it and placed it over his long legs.

“I don’t mean to be forward, and please don’t take this the wrong way,” Rey said shyly, “but should we be closer to one another? Shared body heat and all of that?”

Kylo was silent for a few heartbeats. “I don’t mind.” He moved nearer, placing her snugly between himself and the tapestry-wall. 

For a long while, the only sounds were their breaths, the pseudo-metallic crunch of their blankets, and their racing hearts. Rey watched the puffs of air escape their lips in little white clouds and counted the stars as they emerged from wispy remnants of rain clouds. She chanced a glance at Kylo; he was still awake, but his eyes were closed. Turning onto her side, Rey studied him. There were a dozen reasons she shouldn’t be attracted to him, but she was. Looking at him, she tried to talk herself out of her little crush. _His ears are big_. And? _His nose is crooked_. It’s kind of charming. _His teeth--_ Are behind a set of sinful lips. _He’s pretty. All the monsters are pretty_. Not all the pretty ones are monsters.

He opened his eyes. Caught, Rey floundered for something to say.

“I’ve never heard the names Kylo or Ren before. It’s not your _ real _name, is it?” It wasn’t accusatory or angry; it was almost a statement.

He half-smiled and turned to face her. “How does it go? ‘What’s in a name? A rose by any other name?’.”

“Seriously?” Rey scoffed. “You’re gonna say that to _me_? You know how important names are to me. Names are everything!” She sat up, gesticulating madly. “Names are what connect us to other people. Our surnames connect us to family, let us know we belong to something bigger than ourselves. We name our children after people we love and admire in the hopes that they will be like that person. Names have power. We think long and hard about what to name our dogs, for fuck’s sake! There are hundreds of websites devoted to names and surnames and their meanings and origins. We have to sign our name and initial and sign again on legal documents. Hell, even Facebook is making you use your proper given name now. Names are--they’re--they’re the most important words! In some cultures, the middle name is a family name, too. A patronymic-- you know, says what your dad’s name is. Doesn’t that reinforce the idea? Don’t you think?”

Kylo regarded her silently as she fought to get her breathing back under control. He handed her a canteen; she took slow sips of water until she was calm.

“I see your perspective, especially given your background,” he said evenly. “My name _ is _Kylo Ren, but it’s a name I gave myself. I choose not to use the name I was given, just as you are choosing to change your last name.”

“Right,” Rey said, still a little off-kilter. “Right. It’s just… Do you know what my surname is? Nothing.”

He furrowed his brow. “You don’t have a last name?”

She scoffed. “I have one. It’s Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian-- you know, that area. It literally translates to nothing. So I went from royalty to nothing somehow.”

“Ah. Is that why you’re thinking of changing your name?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “Rey Nádasdy has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?”

“I personally think Rey Nothing sounds amazing.”

She elbowed him in the ribs. “Ha-ha, Mr. Devil.”

“Back to that, are we? Is my birth name Djinn Vampire Devil?”

“You’d have some fucked up parents if that were the case.” She settled back onto her pillow and under her blanket.

“They are pretty fucked up.” He laid his head on his coat.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It is what it is.”

Rey took out her phone. It read 23:32. A sense of déjà vu hit her. She set an alarm for 5 AM and checked her texts. There was currently no signal, so she couldn’t respond, but reading them made her smile.

_ Peanut txt ur boi in the am! I want 2 know alllll about creepy castle x _

_ Please just take a tour, Rey. _

_ Have fun on your ~ghost adventure~ _ヽ(´• ヮ •`)ﾉ 

\------

She awoke an hour or so later to the sound of a blanket rustling. Kylo was tossing the Mylar off of himself and onto her. Maybe he truly didn’t get cold. 

“Sorry,” he grumbled. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “I really didn’t want to sleep much anyway. That’s what the Red Bull was for. Pass it over, would you?”

He grimaced when he picked up the blue-and-silver can. “Bad news,” he said. “It froze.”

Rey took it anyway and smacked it on the ground, as if that would melt the solid hunk of ice within. “I’ll keep it under the blanket awhile and see if that doesn’t help.”

She leaned against the tapestry-wall, drowsy and wishing for caffeine. A lumpy piece of stone jutted from the wall, small enough for her to pull out easily. It fit in her palm and felt warm when she closed her fingers around it. She put it in her backpack, a piece of home to take home. 

She ran her fingers over the wall again, this time paying special attention to the dead greenery. Grasses and moss, leaves and unfamiliar plants all infested the castle. In the spring and summer, Rey was certain they must make the place seem even more alive, the verdance juxtaposed against a bright blue sky and the pale gray stone. She pulled a few weeds from the wall, twisting them in her fingers. 

“Is it everything you hoped?” Kylo asked, breaking her from her reverie.

“It’s more,” she replied, voice barely a whisper.

Kylo cocked his head, confused. “How? It’s not even a building anymore. It’s just a few walls of overgrown rocks.” 

Rey smiled and shook her head. She scooted next to him so that they were shoulder-to-shoulder, a blanket covering their legs. “How many buildings that exist today will even be in this condition four hundred years from now? We work with metal, which rusts. Rusted metal collapses. All things require upkeep. And even with upkeep, eventually everything will be destroyed. You might be thinking of exceptions, like Stonehenge or the Sphinx. I would point out that the Sphinx was lost for some time and is in a constant state of disrepair. Erosion. And mankind has taken its toll on Stonehenge, chipping bits off. Then there’s all the rain. Trilithons are structurally sound, but erosion will get them eventually, too. It’s like entropy. Once you break an egg, you can’t un-break it. We can’t bring back the castle. The egg was always going to break, whether by a predator or by a chick hatching. The building was always going to decay. You eat the egg or raise the chick. You appreciate the remains and remember what was. Everything dies. In this case, something was left behind. And it’s beautiful and sacred, as sacred as any church or mosque or temple.”

All at once, his hands and lips were upon her. A tiny cry of surprise escaped her, and Kylo took advantage of her parted lips by sliding his tongue against hers. Rey immediately crawled onto his lap and twined her fingers in his inky hair. She put one knee on either side of him and his hands fell to her waist.

These were not the languid, slow kisses that were often a prelude to lovemaking. This was a war, and they fought as both allies and enemies. Kylo slid a frigid hand inside Rey’s shirt and up her back; she responded with a gasp and a hard bite to his lower lip. He groaned, pressing bruising fingertips into her hip as the taste of his own blood touched his tongue. She raked her nails along his scalp, down his neck, and finally rested white-knuckled fingers on his shoulders. When she rearranged herself on his lap, she felt him grow hard beneath her. He pulled his mouth from hers and trailed fast, sloppy kisses to the pulse on her neck. He began to suck and she squirmed, mumbling obscenities. 

She pushed him back gently. He watched, pupils blown wide, as she removed first one, then the other heavy shirt she wore. He reached for a bra strap, but she knocked his hand away and shook her head. He pulled off his own sweater and set aside his red scarf. Rey explored him with urgency. She ran her hands over his arms, his chest, and his abdomen, noting with a secret smile that he was ticklish. She cupped his face in her palms almost reverently and felt the skin of his cheeks with the pads of her thumbs. He snatched her wrist and bit it.

She rolled her hips against his growing hardness, eliciting a choked groan. He surged forward, capturing her mouth with his. Clever fingers made quick work of her bra, and she shrugged out of it. A large hand covered her breast and kneaded it. 

Quick as a flash, Rey was on her back. She was panting, watching Kylo watch her. Silhouetted against the sky, he looked even more preternaturally pale. He trailed his fingers down her sides and hovered over the button of her jeans. She nodded and he slid them off of her. She inhaled sharply at the shock of the cold, but it was soon remedied when he lay atop her. She hooked one leg around his hips and rocked up against him.

“Not how I anticipated the night going,” she said, mirth lighting her hazel eyes.

“Is that a bad thing?” he asked, nipping her earlobe and palming her breast.

“Quite the contrary. Haven’t had a good snog in a while.”

And he was moving her again, this time placing her in his lap with her back against his chest. He kissed the crown of her head and tucked her tightly to him; he was very warm.

“I think you’re forgetting it’s freezing and I’m only wearing knickers and socks,” Rey pointed out.

“No, I’m fully aware. I just thought this might be an interesting angle.”

One arm circled around her to keep her in place. He dragged his fingertips down her sternum lightly and slipped them into her knickers. She took a shuddering breath and let her head fall back onto his shoulder as he toyed with her. Those wicked fingers danced around her entrance, circling it, but never going in. She was breathing heavily as he teased her, gasping his name and cursing him. When he brushed against that most sensitive area she cried out and jerked. Finally, he pushed one long finger inside of her. Then he stopped moving entirely. She grasped his arm and dug her fingernails into it.

“You had better fuck me with your fingers right now, or I swear to God I’ll… do something to you.”

He twitched his finger ever so slightly. She dug her nails in harder.

“What are you going to do to me?” he whispered. 

“Well, first I’ll have to finish myself, then I’ll kick your-- your--”

He pushed and pulled his finger slowly, adding pressure to her clit every so often. It was an old rhythm, a primal one, one that humanity knows by instinct. He added a second finger, stretching and circling, playing the pulse to the world’s first dance. She gasped and shuddered, murmured his name and nonsense words. When he felt her muscles flutter and tighten, he watched her bite her lip to keep from crying out. Rey slumped against him, sweaty and spent.

She let out a one-note whistle. “Thanks. That was a good angle. Shall I return the favor?”

“You don’t have to,” he said. He brought his fingers to his lips and licked them clean.

“I know I don’t.” She bit her lip and carefully studied his face. “I’d like to suck you off, actually.”

“Are you offering because you want to or because you think you should?” He had gone pale and his breathing was ragged.

Rey shook her head. “You’re making this way too complicated. If it’s a consent issue, I consent. If it’s a power issue, you have no power over me. If it’s a desire issue, yes, I desire you. I won’t be offended if you say no.” 

He tried to hide his grin. “In that case--”

“Do you see that?” Rey jumped to her feet. “Kylo, get dressed. I think someone’s coming.” 

Twenty meters away was a light. It burned brightly, sending a stabbing pain through her left eye. A flashlight, her brain initially reasoned. A watchman. But as she dressed, several things happened and did not happen. The light changed from a normal bulb’s white to a kelly green, then to a baby pink, then back. Kylo put on his sweater, but slowly, and wasn’t looking where she indicated. The light seemed to be stationary, inert except for the color shifts. She took a step toward it. It moved away. She took a step back. It moved forward.

“What is it?” she asked. “A prank? Orbs of light are always on those cheesy ghost shows. But no one knows we’re here. Unless… Kylo, are you playing a practical joke? That’s actually pretty good, with the colors and everything, and the motion detection.”

“Rey,” Kylo said quietly, “I don’t see any light.”

“Very funny. Can you turn it off now? It’s giving me a weird headache.” She flexed the fingers of her left hand and pressed her palm to her eye. 

“Do you get ocular migraines, Rey? People see lights with those sometimes.” It was the worry in his voice that drew her attention. She looked at the light again, hovering at the junction of two walls. It cast no shadows.

The light sparked bright pink and zoomed away. 

Ghosts weren’t real. Rey knew this. They fit in the same category as Bigfoot and little green men: rubbish. But this orb, bright and gleaming green now, a constant twenty meters ahead, was real. She pressed her left eye closed as she chased the light through the castle ruins, took all the turns at break-neck speed even knowing that the orb would slow down if she did. It wasn’t an anomaly; it was here for her. Something was lying in wait in Castle Csejte, and that something wanted to be found by a Báthory. By Rey.

The light stopped and winked out near a tunnel reconstructed for tourists. There was a fake skeleton decorating the far wall. Rey rolled her eyes and stepped inside.

Kylo started crying. No-- that wasn’t right. Kylo wasn’t with her now. And the voice didn’t sound like him at all. It was a woman, but no one else was here. Rey clicked on the flashlight at her belt, but it was dead. She placed her hand on the rough hewn wall and felt the world tilt. Her left knee buckled and she hit the floor. Everything went white, then her world exploded with foreign color and sound.

\------

The woman was crying about her daughter. Please, could she just visit her? She had sent her to the Countess’s gynaeceum under the impression that she could visit.

_ Benedicta tu in mulieribus-- _

I dropped a stitch. Dear God, Mother, I dropped a stitch!

We’ll say that it was mine. She is more forgiving to the older women.

(but Anna Darvolia let slip the truth)

(and the whore had needles stuck into her fingers)

_ Et dimitte nobis debita nostra-- _

The buzzing so loud, they’re in my ears, stinging my eyes, I can’t breathe because if I open my mouth the bees will crawl in and they’re already up my nose, dear God sweet God there is no God

_ Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie-- _

He has a hunk of bread in his hand. It’s stale, barely fit for a hog, and barely a mouthful. She has been standing in that wet petticoat for most of the night, his beloved, and he wants to give her this small comfort. He has worked here long enough to know, though, that if he does, she will die for it, and maybe he will as well. He has worked here long enough to know that his beloved will be dead tomorrow anyway, so he steels his heart and turns away.

_ Pater noster, qui est in caelis, sanctificatur nomen tuum, adveniat regnum tuum-- _

“I’m afraid that we have a case of cholera on our hands. I don’t want to alarm the other servants or create a panic in town,” she said quietly. Pastor Magyari nodded.

_ Sed libera nos a malo-- _

“It is said about us as a preacher that we know other people complain, but that Your Grace is not reproached. Therefore, I cannot conceal it. It must be even moreso announced that, regarding the girl, Your Grace should not have so acted because it offends the Lord, and we will be punished if we do not complain to and criticize Your Grace. In order to confirm that my words are true, we need only exhume the body. You will find that the marks identify the way in which death occured!"

_ Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum-- _

Help, oh help, you clouds! Help, clouds, give health, give Erzsébet Báthory health!

_ Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae-- _

_ In hora mortis nostrae-- _

_ Mortis-- _

\------

Rey woke up.

Her mouth tasted slightly like blood and her whole body ached. Her eyes adjusted to her hotel room’s dim light quickly. The drapes were drawn. Kylo sat in the corner chair, immersed in a book.

“Hey,” she managed.

“Good afternoon,” Kylo replied. “Would you like water or substandard tea? There’s also a vending machine in the hallway, but I don’t think any of that’s good for you right now.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not a doctor, but I think you had a seizure,” he said, seriously. “Have you had them before?”

She shook her head. “There was a light, and then… Are you supposed to dream in your own language?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t dream. Well, I guess I do now, but I never used to. I was seeing and hearing things-- real things-- but none of it was in English. And I understood it all.”

“What things?”

“Prayers in Latin, scrambled up. I knew those; my friend is a priest. Crying, talking, thinking. Impressions. All about the castle. All about _ her _. It was horrible.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Not really. You know how I was saying there might be a conspiracy? Like the idea had merits? This vision or dream or… It’s one thing to think that once upon a time a teenage girl was covered in honey and had bees set upon her. You can turn that right the fuck off. But I couldn’t, because I _was _the girl, and I was _watching _the girl, and hearing her, and hearing and feeling the bees. And the boy with the bread wouldn’t give it to me because he knew the Countess would punish him if he did, but he also knew that I would be dead from exposure soon. Even if the three who were executed did all of their killings in hidden rooms, those things happened outside, in the open. She had to know. And I know it was common for ladies to smack around their servants, but she did it so much that other people noticed. I wanted a family, but she didn’t tick the boxes for an ideal grandma, so I told myself pretty lies.” A fat tear leaked out of her eye and rolled onto her pillow.

“Rey,” Kylo said, “here’s the thing. Erzsébet Báthory was a human being. Humans aren’t pure good or pure evil. They’re not storybook characters. They have complex motivations and any number of reasons to not be what we want. Erzsébet Báthory also died more than 400 years ago. Interrogation at the time wasn’t considered admissible unless it was done under torture, so the defendants’ statements should be looked at through that lens. Did she torture those girls? Kill them? What was her level of involvement? No one born in this century can tell you.”

Rey sniffed. “You’re not wrong.”

“But you’re not convinced.” He handed her a glass of water and helped her sit up. “My advice? Let the drama go. The Internet can have it.”

She laughed then. “Internet drama is the best. Nothing like adults starting off acting their age and slowly descending to toddler-hood. That’s when I slide in with my reaction gifs.”

He tucked himself back into the small chair and picked up his book. “Oh? Any favorites?”

“Flaming Elmo and Michael Jackson eating popcorn work best in those situations. Still reading about Jane and Rochester?”

“Nope. About to start a re-read of this.” He lifted a well-worn copy of The Phantom of the Opera.

“Huh. I’ve never read it. Is it at all like the stage show?”

“Well, there’s a disfigured man in an opera house in Paris and he loves a singer named Christine who is mildly involved with someone named Raoul. That’s pretty much it in terms of similarities.”

“Ooh, are you a book purist?”

“Not at all. They’re just not very similar beyond that.”

“Read it to me?” she implored, patting the spot beside her on the bed. He sat cross-legged, back straight, until she tugged his arm, urging him to relax. They lay side-by-side for the second time.

He cleared his throat and she closed her eyes. His voice lulled her into a dreamless sleep.

“The Phantom of the Opera existed. He was not, as was believed for a long time, a creature imagined by artists; a superstition of directors; a droll creation of the excitable minds of young women in the corps de ballet, their mothers, or the box attendants, the cloak room employees or the doorkeeper. Yes, he existed, in flesh and blood, despite the fact that, he appeared to everyone to be a veritable phantom-- that is to say, a ghost. I was struck very early on in my researches in the archives…”

\------

When she woke, Kylo was still dozing. In sleep, he looked very young, almost boyish. She pushed a few locks of hair from his face and traced the thin line of his scar. She pressed a dry kiss to it, a childish gesture, but one she couldn’t resist. She had two days left in Čachtice. She was meant to be visiting churches, museums, and graveyards, but this was nice. She had missed being close to someone. In one of her worst times, Luke had told her to take what happiness she could out of life, no matter how small. This closeness, this warmth, Kylo’s quiet snores, were making her happy, and so she chose to stay in bed. She avoided thinking of how she’d never see him again. Or maybe his philanthropy would bring him to London and they could catch up one day. She grabbed her phone and took a selfie with sleeping Kylo, then sent it to some friends. 

Despite the time difference, her phone blew up immediately.

_ Peanut WHAT _

_ WHAT EVEN _

_ GURL _

_ Peanut does he even speak english??? _

_ O.O get it, neat-o!!! _

_ How’s that d? _

_ Steal his wallet before he wakes up _ ლ(⚆□⚆ლ) 

\------

“Would you like to come to the church with me?” Rey wrapped her infinity scarf around her neck twice and slid on her fingerless gloves. 

“I’m not particularly religious,” Kylo replied stiffly.

“No, you misunderstand me. I’m not going to Mass, I’m going to the church where the Countess was allegedly buried.”

“Allegedly?”

“People threw a fit when they found out she was buried on sacred ground, so the story goes. So they dug her up and moved her. No one has any idea where her remains are now.”

“If she’s not there, what do you hope to find?”

“Resonance. Hopefully with 100% fewer seizures.”

“It’s really all about being where they were, isn’t it? Nothing more.”

“Nothing _ less _,” she corrected.

He regarded her thoughtfully, dark eyes tracing the curves of her lips. “The way you think and speak… you have a unique way of looking at the world. Why didn’t you pursue history?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “No money in it. No money in graphic design, either, which surprised me. I’m at a call center now. Give me your phone.”

“Pardon?” he asked, but handed his device to her without thinking.

“I’m putting in my number. If that’s okay.”

“Yeah. Yes, that’s good. Um, do you want mine?”

She winked and tossed her phone to him. She had already created a contact.

“Kylo M. Ren?” he read. “What’s the M for?”

Rey snickered. “Mephistopheles.”

“Oh, for the love of-- Why Mephistopheles?”

“We’ve been over this, Mr. Devil. Now I find out you don’t like churches…”

Kylo snorted. “I meant why specifically Mephistopheles.”

“Two reasons,” Rey said perfunctorily. “One, I don’t know many devils. Two, I saw an opera on telly once where Mephistopheles wore a red scarf.”

“The Altinoglu production of _ Faust _from 2011? That had some interesting directorial choices.”

“You’re an opera snob, too?”

He scoffed as he knotted his scarf. “I am not a snob. And I’m not the devil.”

“You are.” She helped him button his pea coat, an unnervingly intimate and domestic gesture that she found she liked. “I’m going to miss you.”

He smiled down at her, cheeks tinged pink. “I’ll miss you too. But, uh, I’m in the UK on business from time to time, and now we have each other’s information.”

“Do you promise to text, at least?”

He nodded. She surged up and placed a kiss on his cheek. 

\------

All airports, Rey thought, had the same color walls. She sat near her gate at Košice International, checking her phone frequently. She was killing her battery quickly, but she had nothing to do other than stare at the gray walls and watch other bored travellers. Tapping a sandal-clad foot, she slumped into her chair. Soon, she’d be in seat 32A on a plane to Gatwick. 

It was over.

She was almost relieved, in a way, to be going home. She had been traveling for three weeks; she missed her bed and she missed her friends. 

Nádasdy Castle and the surrounding town of Sárvár were moving, but not for the reasons she had anticipated. She had thought to learn about an ancestor. Instead, she wept at a monument placed in a graveyard for Serbs killed and displaced during the Holocaust. There were more museums in Warsaw than she could fit into four days, and she wanted to visit the Royal Palace besides. Wawel Castle in Kraków had appealed to her on many levels: it held an art gallery, kept István Báthory safe from Ivan the Terrible, and had a seamless fusion of four architectural styles. György Thurzó’s home at Orava Castle offered alternate versions of court transcripts. It was also a film set and museum of various histories and oddities, including a two-headed cow. Vranov was underwhelming, its church and monastery beautiful but incomparable to all she had seen before; she shouldn’t have saved it for last.

But now she was leaving behind chapels and castles. She had postcards and pictures and, best of all, memories. She had flown out of London trying to piece together the mystery of Countess Báthory only to discover that there was no mystery. She had wanted to find a family, but she still didn’t have any siblings or cousins or living parents. Was she a Nádasdy? Or was she still a Nitko? Nothing?

A sonorous voice in the back of her mind that sounded oddly like Luke and Kylo at the same time whispered to her. _ Nitko only means nothing if you want it to _. She shook her head. What an absurd notion. 

Glancing around furtively, Rey pulled her pilfered rock from her carry-on. She smiled at it, her little piece of home to take home. Her phone dinged. And dinged. And dinged.

_ What time do you land? _

_ Normal time, not Slovakia time _

_ Because WE MISS YOU _

(づ`ᴥ`)づ

(∩￢ ᴥ￢ )⊃━☆ﾟ.*

乁(◍▾◎)ㄏ

_ That was bb doing magic _

_ He turned into an owlllll _

_ Because magic _

_ Rey _

_ Rey _

_ I don’t like jager bombs _

_ Kill me when you get home _

[⨶෴⨶]

Rey snickered and replied: _ If you’re that pissed, how are you making such perf lenny faces sis x _

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

She laughed and threw her phone into her big blue purse. Even if she was a Nitko, her friends made sure Rey knew that she wasn’t truly nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As previously stated, full citations will come at the end of Chapter 3. It behooves me to cite Pastor Magyari's speech and the Countess's prayer now, though, as I took them verbatim:  
Infamous Lady: The True Story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory by Kimberly L. Craft provided everything in the dream sequence except the Latin prayers. Those were taught to me back in '98 by my late Latin teacher, requiescat in pace, who always insisted that we "know it, live it, love it, learn it".  
So in addition to praying for health, the Countess prayed to the clouds for cats. 99 of them. To go after her enemies. And this is the best idea in the history of ever, because who doesn't want 99 cats attacking their enemies? Not like the cops can arrest you for telepathically controlling feline behavior. PROVE IT, DETECTIVE. 
> 
> Thanks to Globalreader for pointing out that I'd incorrectly named Austen the author of Jane Eyre!
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please leave a contribution in the little box.  
Chocolate Kylo for anyone who caught the Starkid reference <3


	3. LONDON

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so y'all know, Harold's is a real pub. I had my first drink there! Granted, this was many years ago and it may not be there anymore. Green Park tube stop, if anyone's interested.  
Han's bar is inspired by a place no one would go with me in Soho. I was *begging* this group of assholes to come into a shady-as-fuck bar with me. I lost the fight :(
> 
> So, language! There is some Croatian in this chapter, this fic's version of Shyriiwook. You don't need to understand it. I provided it myself (extended family in Hrvatska, yoooo), but there may still be an error or two. Call out my non-fluent ass.
> 
> cw: alcohol abuse, minor character death

Luke wasn’t smiling. He rarely was. Still, Rey quirked up the sides of her mouth and gave a little wave as she approached, rolling her dilapidated suitcase behind her. He gave her a short hug. What it lacked in length it made up for in voracity. His scraggly beard scratched her cheek.

“I missed you,” she said.

“Let’s go.” He took both her suitcase and carry-on. Their trip to the tube station was silent and awkward. Silence from Luke was not unusual. He was a man of few words, and when he did speak he was often grumpy. She knew he hadn’t always been this way. He had been something of a hippie once, or so she’d been told, optimistic and free with smiles. 

No, it was not uncommon for Father Skywalker to be silent. Usually, though, the silences were amiable, or at least peaceful. This silence was neither of those things. It was the silence between lightning and thunder, and Luke’s eyes were a storm. Rey wondered what the lightning had been and when the thunder would come.

The long journey into London proper from Gatwick was marginally less awkward, if only because they were surrounded by other uncomfortable strangers.

Rey wasn’t certain, but she thought Catholic priests were supposed to wear their white collar everywhere. Luke didn’t, and she could never bring herself to ask why. She wasn’t religious, and he really didn’t seem to be either. The first time they’d hung out, they had shared a pint at a seedy pub in Soho. The windows had been covered with newspaper and it was cash-only. What the hell kind of priest came to a place like this? Then the owner had come up to them and asked about the _ holy hobbit coming out of hiding _. Luke had smiled (smiled!) and introduced them. 

That was the day she had learned the meaning of her name. “Han Solo, Rey Nitko.”

“Jeste li vi iz Hrvatske?” someone else had growled from the shadows.

“He wants to know if you’re Croatian,” Han had explained, “because of your last name, probably.”

“Er, I don’t actually know. I didn’t know it was Croatian, Mister…”

“Baka. It means ‘grandma’ _ na hrvatskom _. Ain’t that right, Chewie?” 

“Is that his real name?” Rey had asked.

“Hell if I know.” Han had shrugged as Luke waved a remarkably hairy man over.

“How are you, Chewie? That Kickstarter campaign going okay?” Luke had asked.

The memory faded as the duo reached their stop.

\------

Rey shared a two-bedroom walkup with a friend from university. Their landlord wasn’t particularly fond of them, and the silly signs that Rose kept putting on their door did nothing to foster goodwill. Rey’s favorite had been “Tico & Nitko Detective Squad, We’re Almost Usually Right Sometimes!” Today the door was decorated in pink crepe paper. A sign saying “Neat-O Nitko Returns! Beware!” was heavily duct taped in place. There were indications that someone has tried to rip off the tape. Rey snickered as she turned the key and let herself in.

Home. The smell of lemon kitchen cleaner and potting soil, the quiet _ vrrm _of the furnace, the lumpy red sofa with a few springs out of place… It was good to be back.

She plopped onto the sofa before checking the time. 12:32-- Rose wouldn’t be home for a few hours. The hairs on her hands and neck were standing up, and she realized Luke was looming in the open doorway.

“Come on in. You know where the food is.” She yawned and closed her eyes. She could hear Luke moving around the apartment, getting water, opening the fridge, and finally settling into the squeaky parlor chair across from her.

“Rey,” he began, quiet but firm, “what did you bring back?”

“Hmm? Oh, I was gonna give you your souvenirs in a few days. You know, swing by after I’d settled back in. But sure.” She looked around the room for her carry-on and pulled it back to the couch. She dug through it and pulled out a brown paper bag of postcards from everywhere she’d stopped, even airport layovers. “Guess you get first pick.” 

The bag was in his hand for less than a second before he tossed it across the room, sending postcards to the floor.

“No,” he said harshly as she looked at him with confusion. He leaned forward. “What did you bring back?”

With a shaky hand, she pulled out her stone. “I took this from her castle. Was that wrong?”

Luke snatched her prize from her palm and threw it with enough force that it cracked a flower pot. Potting soil cascaded to the floor.

“No,” he repeated, louder and more angrily. He took her face in his hands and locked eyes with her. The storm was still there, but behind the anger was something more primal: fear. “What did you bring back?”

Then she remembered it: a match in the dark, lighting an oil lamp that wasn’t really there because she was asleep. A dream, her first dream, and Luke warning her. _ You brought me. And if you aren’t careful, you’ll bring something back _.

Her eyes widened in realization and she covered Luke’s hands with her own. She took a deep, shaky breath. “I don’t know, Luke. I really don’t know.”

Luke reclined in the squeaky chair, patting her cheek affectionately as he did so. “I believe you, Rey.” He surveyed the apartment. “Sorry about the flower pot. I’ll get you a new one. But Commandment Seven, Rey: thou shalt not steal.”

“I took a rock,” Rey said caustically. “You steal WiFi. Which is really a victimless crime?”

“But I go to confession,” Luke countered.

Rey snorted. “I don’t think it counts unless you’re actually sorry and stop doing the sin.”

He shrugged. “I’ll look it up on some stolen WiFi later.”

They laughed, and by silent accord got to their knees and picked up the scattered postcards. He ended up taking only one, a somber reminder of the atrocities committed at Sárvár. He asked Rey to sign and date the back of it on the left hand side.

As he was leaving, Luke made a strange request. 

“Come to St. George’s some evening this week.”

“Like for Mass? Is the regular priest sick and you’re taking over the evening services?”

“No,” he said. “Just please come by. It’s not anything dire. Ask someone to fetch me. It would mean a lot.”

Luke had never asked her to come to church, for either a service or a visit. Rey reasoned that this must be important, despite his attempts to convince her otherwise. “Of course.”

She kissed him on the cheek and they said their farewells.

\------

_ Come 2 harolds x _

_ Get turnt _

_ Get real turnt _

_ Get turnt _

_ Get get real turnt _

_ Neat-o it’s a surprise party _

_ Ruined it classic pava lol _

_ I’m already drunk lol _

_ 5 somewhere lol _

_ Omg it’s 5 here lol _

_ HAROLD’S RN _

﴾☯∀☯﴿

So Rey chugged a Red Bull for a quick buzz and went to Harold’s Pub.

\------

Rey thought that they were all supposed to yell “surprise”, but the chorus that greeted her was something else. Some, like Poe, Paige, and Tallie did yell “surprise”. Jess Pava screamed “NEAT-O!” at the top of her lungs. Han said a very unenthusiastic “hooray” from the corner, nursing what was likely a scotch. Chewie roared something in Croatian (probably “surprise”). The black-and-white bird that never left his shoulder (and kept Chewie’s long hair perpetually tangled) screeched. Finn and Rose unfurled a clearly homemade welcome home banner. 

Rey smiled and laughed.

Finn lifted her into a hug and spun her around. “Good to see you, Peanut.”

Rose approached next. “You don’t look surprised. Jess spoiled it, didn’t she?”

“No comment,” Rey said, stifling a giggle. She pulled Rose into a tight embrace. “I missed you guys.”

“Not too much, I hope. And you made new friends.” Rose waggled her eyebrows comically. “Did you steal his wallet like I suggested?”

“Absolutely. I found six euros, one loony, and a picture of secret demon grandchildren. And it wasn’t like that.”

“Lies,” Jess hissed, having sneaked up behind her. “How was he in bed?”

“Well, he snores, if that’s what you mean.”

Jess put a hand on her hip and set her drunken eyes on Rey’s. “You know exactly what I mean, madam. So like, how big are we talking? Which way did he point?”

“Oh my God, is she talking about your hookup?” Finn interjected. “I don’t wanna hear any more, Pava. Keep your dick theories to yourself tonight.”

“I’m telling you, every man named Brian points--”

“He wasn’t a hookup,” Rey insisted. “I slept next to him.”

“Told you!” Rose said triumphantly. “I knew he was too pretty for her. You know what she thinks of the pretty ones. Pay up!”

Almost everyone reluctantly handed Rose £10; Paige had not been foolish enough to bet against her sister and Han and Chewie had been left in the dark about the mysterious stranger.

Tallie tactfully interceded and asked to see pictures of Warsaw and Budapest. Rey unlocked her phone and passed it around. Collective _ oohs _ and _ aahs _were punctuated with questions. Her friends were buying her drinks faster than she could swallow them. 

At last, Finn asked her The Big Question. It was his success at finding his biological family that had sent her on her pilgrimage, so he knew better than the rest what the journey had meant to her and what parts were most important.

“So did you get the letters?”

“Eventually.” Rey took a fortifying breath. “I’d talked to the assistant curator, who said I could have photocopies. That was on the phone. I show up at the Archives and am super excited, but then I’m told no. I was really dumb and had worn shorts, so while I was waiting for my Taxify I started jogging in place to get warm and I guess I was talking to myself because this guy started laughing at me. I yelled at him, but it turned out he was really nice and even spoke English. He said he could get me the letters. I was like, ‘what do you want for them?’ He wanted to buy me a ton of chocolate at an insanely fancy place. Which I didn’t know at the time, but he just said to meet him at this place the next day. Well, I’ll be damned, he had the letters delivered to my hotel! Then I went and ate a bunch of fancy chocolate with him, that he paid for. Crazy, right?”

“Was it hookup guy?” Jess slurred.

“We didn’t hook up,” Rey reiterated, rolling her eyes. “But I looked at the letters, and it’s really weird. Like the handwriting is obviously different because it’s a different language and 400 years old, but there are some similarities. The funky thing I do with _y_? The way it’s all jagged? She did that, too. And that curly bit on our lowercase _d _is the same. It could be a coincidence, but it just really made me feel connected to my past. My family. I’ll never be able to thank Kylo Ren enough.”

Han and Chewie were at her side almost in an instant. “What was that name?” Han asked sharply.

“Kylo Ren,” Rey replied. “Have you heard of him? I know he does business here sometimes.”

Han scoffed. “Business. Yeah, I guess he does, at that.” He turned Rey to face him and got very close to her. He used his index finger to punctuate his words, which he often did when he was angry or otherwise passionate about something. “Listen, Rey. You can’t trust him. He has a heart of stone. He’ll do anything to get what he wants. Don’t believe a word he says. And never sign anything he gives you. Names have power, and he knows it.”

“Uvijek nosite šešir,” Chewie added.

“That too. C’mon, Chewie. We gotta go find Luke. See you around, kid.”

That had Rey disconcerted only until Rose shoved a new drink into her hands. “Jager bomb!”

“You said you hated Jager!”

“I have to try it again to see if the results are the same. You know, for science.”

They toasted. “For science!” 

And the rest of the night went by in a blissfully drunken haze, theories about Kylo abandoned in favor of Pava’s theories about dicks.

\------

St. George’s wasn’t the most beautiful cathedral. Rey considered it boxy and dull, its only redeeming features being the giant stained glass windows in the front. It was certainly no rival to the opulent St. Paul’s, whose Baroque saucer dome and paired Corinthian columns were designed to evoke its namesake in Vatican City. Nor, in Rey’s estimation, did St. George’s compare to St. James’s, Piccadilly, which, while small, had a striking juxtaposition of red brick and white stone dressings. She eyed this beige box of a building from across the street, trying to make it more beautiful in her mind. 

She walked quickly across the road, nearly tripping as one of her sandals stuck to a particularly jagged piece of loose asphalt. A dry wind picked up, blowing her hair into her face. Cars honked and a driver or two shouted as she stumbled towards the cathedral. She bumped into passers-by, tourists and parishioners alike. A sudden dizzy spell hit her, and she was struck with a brief flash of panic as she considered the possibility that she might have another seizure.

Warm, familiar hands steadied her. “Careful, Rey.”

She stopped breathing.

“Kylo?”

In Slovakia, his renewed presence had been a good thing. He had quite possibly saved her life. He had been a good friend to her, helping her more times than she could count. How had he phrased it? There wouldn’t be a word for coincidences if they didn’t exist? But this was the third time he had shown up in her life. Unkar, a lifelong gambler, was fond of saying that two is a coincidence, but three is a pattern. The words _ how _ and _ why _flew to the front of her mind but never made it to her lips. He spoke first.

“I was going to be married once. She thought the story of St. George was funny. She asked me how a person could possibly be Catholic, because it’s a religion built on hate and lies and bedtime stories. She said that if you didn’t believe in dragons-- actual, literal, fire-breathing dragons-- you couldn’t be Catholic because Saint George was canonized for killing a dragon.”

“That’s… kinda rude.”

“I’m not defending her,” Kylo clarified. “Just explaining. Any place called St. George’s reminds me of her. Good memories.”

“What happened to her?”

“She fell in love with someone else. Then she died. Most days I can’t remember what she looked like. I vividly remember her hair, though. It was long and red, down past her waist.”

“What was her name?”

“Lilith.”

“Do you miss her terribly?” The words were coming out automatically and with no inflection.

“Not anymore.”

“Is she the one you got in a fish-fight over?”

Kylo laughed. “No. _ Her _name was Sarah. I remember every detail of her face.” He seemed to be simultaneously studying Rey and lost in thought. “Her eyes were the most remarkable hazel.”

“We have a mutual acquaintance,” she blurted out.

“Oh? Not a friend?” His dark eyes sparked to life, glinting with mischief.

“Well, he’s _ my _friend. He seems to hate you.”

“I’m intrigued,” he said.

“Han Solo.”

Kylo inhaled sharply through his nose. A quick, cold breeze blew his inky hair into his face and ruffled his red woolen scarf. “Han isn’t an acquaintance, and he doesn’t hate me-- though I imagine he said quite a few uncomplimentary things. He’s my father. Was Chewie with him? Still carrying Morg on his shoulder?”

Rey’s jaw slackened. “Han has mentioned a son, but only in passing, and very rarely.”

“He’s not very proud of his _issue_ at present. I suppose he told you to wear a hat and ask my name?”

“No. That would be pretty petty. I know your absurd hatred of hats.” She smiled a little. “Listen, I gotta go. I’m meeting a friend inside. Ring me tomorrow evening, okay?”

“Would you like to have coffee with me instead?” he offered.

She touched his hand, no longer so very worried about his presence. He had family in the area, and a history. He wasn’t following her. It was just another coincidence. “I can’t. I have to meet my friend. Tomorrow?”

“Have coffee with me. Or tea, if you prefer,” he rephrased. “Please.”

“Not tonight, thank you,” she said.

Or that’s what she meant to say. The words that had come out of her mouth were very different.

“Sure, just let me speak with my friend first.” She blinked a few times in rapid succession and brought her fingers to her lips.

“Not tonight, thank you,” she meant.

“Sure, just let me speak with my friend first,” she said.

She furrowed her brow and looked at Kylo in a panic, but he seemed totally serene, which made no sense either way. If she had said no, he would have told her goodbye. If she had said sure, he would have either walked to the building with her or told her he would wait. He was doing neither. He was just looking at her, studying her face the way she had studied the Báthory letters.

She focused on the word _ no _, visualizing the letters in her mind’s eye, imagining the sound of it.

“Sure, just let me speak with my friend first.”

She started to panic in earnest, shaking and gasping for air. She gripped the front of Kylo’s dark coat until her knuckles were white. He pressed his forehead to hers and wrapped his arms around her. She began to sniffle; he shushed her with a kiss on her forehead. 

“I would prefer it if you didn’t visit your friend tonight, my lamb,” he whispered.

She choked on the word _ okay _before it could come out. Furiously, painfully, she bit down on her tongue, wrapped her fingers around the column of her throat. Still tucked in the cocoon of his embrace, she fought. One leg shuffled towards the cathedral; the other moved away, actively warring with its counterpart. The movements jarred her so that she nearly fell to her knees, but Kylo caught her. He still wore that puzzling expression. It would be interesting to find out what had him so captivated, she thought; she really ought to go with him. One hand linked its fingers with his. But Luke had seemed kind of off, and that was important. The other hand reached toward the cathedral doors. Never mind Kylo and Luke and their respective dramatics, something was clearly wrong with her. The hand that had been reaching for Luke now went to her big blue purse and searched for her phone. She had never had a reason to call 999 before.

Something must have clicked in her speech center because she heard herself saying _ nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine _ as she tried in vain to unlock her phone.

“You don’t need A&E, Rey,” Kylo assured her, speaking to her as if she were a child. “Agree to have coffee and I promise you’ll feel better.”

“Okay,” she croaked, desperate. She was fine. She was better than fine. Her tongue didn’t even hurt from where she’d bitten it. Unhurt but mentally shaken, she looked into the eyes of Kylo Ren. 

“What did you do to me?” she asked, voice barely a whisper.

He gazed impassively back. “Nothing you didn’t agree to.”

“What does that mean?” 

“Let’s walk and talk,” Kylo suggested. Fingers still laced, they set off.

“We made a bargain, you and I. I would get you the Báthory letters. In exchange, I got your company. You thought yourself a shrewd bargainer, I’m sure, when you said you wanted the letters first. I wouldn’t waste my time with anyone stupid enough to take a deal without any proviso; I don’t surround myself with fools, no matter how beautiful. You did pass up a wide-open opportunity to net _all_ of my connections, but I was careless enough to leave that on the table. It was really very fortunate for me that you missed it. You assumed that by ‘company’ I meant the one pre-arranged meeting at Café Gerbeaud. You should have specified the terms. When I brought the letters to your hotel room, I was relatively certain you wouldn’t read what you were signing. People usually don’t. You put your hands on me, held me in place, and signed. I reminded you of our meeting, which you attended. You thought that the end of your contractual obligation. As we did not discuss an end to the duration or location of your ‘company’, it is therefore, as stated in the contract, considered to be eternal. 

“You’re a clever one, and I can hear the gears in your head turning. You’re thinking that you signed your full name as it is _now_. Can’t the contract be broken if you change your name, as you have been considering? It’s only proper to disclose the nature of an Infernal Contract, so I’ll tell you. Yes and no. No, because you’d only be doing it to get out of the contract. Yes, because for you personally the power of a name has a certain significance; it is bound to your identity. If you were to be, for example, legitimized as Nádasdy issue, the contract could have been nullified. Note the verb tense: _could have been_.

“You see, in the old days, before there was paper and pen or papyrus and quill or even stone and chisel, I had to seal a pact somehow. We used words, handshakes, and bodily fluids. I preferred blood. You unknowingly sealed our pact with blood when you spilled a drop on the envelope I provided. You secured the bargain with your very _ being _, not just your name.

“Are you crying, lamb?” he crooned.

“You said you weren’t the devil,” Rey whispered.

Kylo smiled softly and turned her face so that she was looking at him. “And you believed me.” 

“I’m such an idiot,” she said. “I’m so fucking stupid.” 

“Come now, don’t be so hard on yourself. Even King Solomon couldn’t fully best me. Funnily enough, he called me King of the Djinn. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not really _ the _ devil, just _ a _devil. Asmodeus.”

“Yeah, that makes me feel smashing. Thanks. All better now. Totally fine being the devil’s-- excuse me, Asmodeus’s slave.”

Kylo stopped up short. “Slave?” he asked gently, confused. “No, beloved. You’re not my slave. You’re my companion.”

She lashed out then. “Companion? Beloved? No. If you can forcibly compel me to do things against my will, that’s slavery. And it’s certainly not love.”

“I can’t make you do anything other than be at my side, as per our arrangement. I can go anywhere to find you and I can bring you anywhere with me. Which you agreed to.”

“Anywhere, at any time? So I could be in the shower and then, surprise! Asmodeus is here for a show! Or, oh Jesus, oh fuck…” Wide-eyed and wild, she demanded, “Could you take me to Hell? And then you could just leave me there to die, oh my God…”

“I could, yes. Do you want me to?” he asked with levity. “Sorry. Poor attempt at a joke. I rule over the Second Circle. It is, as Dante once put it, _ a part where no thing gleams _. It is beautiful in its own way, I think. Hills, crags, and the company is good.”

“Wow, sinners must be better than I thought.”

“Judge not, as they say. Cleopatra has the most fascinating stories. There is no aging or death, just stasis. You would be young and beautiful forever. Ah, here is a little coffee shop. Would you like to try it?”

“Do I have a choice?”

He recoiled as if she had slapped him. 

\------

“Rose, I need to get wine-drunk,” she announced as soon as she made it through the door.

“Wine-drunk is your least favorite kind of drunk,” Rose reminded her. “Your head is in the toilet for an obscene amount of time.”

“That is precisely the point,” Rey replied, frantic. “I’m quitting my job. I’ll probably be doing some couch surfing for a while. Or, I don’t know, maybe I’ll go live in the rectory with Luke. If that even counts.”

“What are you on about, Rey?” Rose asked. “You’re scaring me.”

“No, it’s fine. I just really need to be wine-drunk.”

She took out her phone and blocked Kylo’s number. Then she texted Han: _ We need to talk about your son. _

_ Fuck _

_ He told you? _

_ What did he tell you _

Rey: _ Enough to make me question my sanity _

Rey: _ And his _

_ Fuck _

_ Don’t sign anything _

_ Obviously _

Rey: _ Few weeks too late _

_ Fuck _

_ Wear a hat _

_ What did you sign with _

Rey: _ Accidental blood. Also full name. _

_ Fuck kid _

_ What’s he have you doing _

Rey: _ Companionship _

Rey: _ & calling me pet names?? Beloved?? Like wtf Satan _

Rey: _ If you say fuck I’ll smack you thru the phone _

_ Shit _

_ 1st, he’s not Satan, he’s Asmodeus _

_ Big difference _

_ 2nd, if he calls you beloved then he means it _

_ Especially if you’re wearing a hat _

_ Can’t lie to you if you’re wearing a hat _

_ Sorry kid _

_ Sucks to be us _

_ 3rd, get drunk. It helps _

Rey: _ I’m working on it _

\------ 

Rey sat on Finn and Poe’s floor, Finn’s laptop resting on her knees. She absently stroked BB, scratching the little corgi behind the ears and on his belly.

After every Google search, she cleared the search history. Every hour, she cleared the browser history. She intended to purge cookies and temporary Internet files. She would pour bleach on this computer if she had to. No one could know what she was looking for. They would think her mad. If only. 

A dry, unamused laugh escaped her. She was now well-versed on how to handle Infernal Contracts should she ever encounter one while playing Dungeons and Dragons. Even excluding the term “dungeons and dragons” did no good. She thought she had found something promising when she had eliminated the game from her search parameters, but discussion threads were deceiving. 

Search: “Break infernal contract” 

_ So I was p dumb and made a bargain w what turned out to be Asmodeus =/ Now my party is stuck in Nessus. I’m a lvl 14 rogue, 19 dex w/o mod. Bard has 22 cha w/o mod. Can we steal the contract? Can the bard seduce? He loves to seduce lol. Wiz has remove curse. Does that work? 5e. Help! _

Wikipedia had been somewhat helpful, if confusing. Was Shamdon another name for Asmodeus, or was Shamdon his father? And parentage seemed kind of important, given Han’s involvement in her life. There were just so many theories: angel mother, demon father, demon mother, incubus father, succubus mother, mortal father, mortal mother… Asmodeus is the King of Hell, he is a Prince; he is the greatest of all devils, he is the thirty-second best. He is Pride, he is Wrath, he is Lust. He has three heads and spits fire; he can appear as an attractive man, but will always have a limp because he has a literal chicken leg. He’s malevolent; he’s more of a trickster than an evil force. Everything was so contradictory. There were a few constants, or at least recurring themes. He had a strong association with the wind and stone. He ruled the Second Level of Hell. The stories were interesting, if unnerving. She read about how he had (allegedly, always “according to tradition”) helped build the Temple of Solomon after being tricked, but tricked King Solomon in return. She learned that he had become enamored with a woman named Sarah and killed her bridegrooms until the angel Raphael intervened, telling Tobias to burn the liver of a fish to keep him away. She read that he rode upon the back of a fire-breathing dragon and commanded seventy-two legions. 

Search: “Banish devil asmodeus”

_ I want to know how to summon Asmodeus. I need to get revenge on… _

_ Do not attempt to summon Lord Asmodeus! He is powerful, and unless you can contact St. John or an Archangel, it is very hard to get rid of him! Here are a few other demons and devils to try, since you want revenge. Lord Asmodeus isn’t interested in that anyway... _

Search: “Infernal contract with asmodeus”

_ I’m DMing a game of Pathfinder right now and trying to trick my party into an infernal contract. I’ve created an NPC who is a priest of Asmodeus… _

She slammed the laptop shut and fought back a scream. Her phone dinged in her purse across the room; she ignored it. She had been ignoring it for days.

“You okay, Peanut?” Finn called from the kitchen. 

“Yeah,” she lied. “I just had to rage-quit the Internet for a minute.”

“I been there.” Finn brought her a cup of mint tea with honey in a ceramic mug with the words _ Workin’ Boys: A New Musical! _ printed on the side in green. “How’s that sore throat?”

_ A lie _ , she thought. _ An excuse to not tell you why I really look so terrible _. “A little better.” She re-opened the laptop and picked up where she left off, starting by clearing her browsing history. Her phone dinged; she ignored it.

Finn sat next to her on the floor. She jerked the computer screen shut again. It wouldn’t do to have him see “how to break a deal with the devil” in the search bar.

“You know you can tell me what’s going on, right?”

“Finn…”

“You’re my best mate. Whatever it is, I can help you, or I can try.”

“I’m fine, Finn. Really.”

“Rey, how long have we known each other? I know something’s up. Did something happen to you on your trip?” His face was so open, so honest, so earnest, so very Finn, that she couldn’t help herself.

“Yes and no. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” She laid her head on his shoulder anyway.

“Try me. You tell me you saw a ghost, I’ll start believing in ghosts. You’re my family, Peanut.”

“I…” What did she have to lose, really? He would either believe her or he wouldn’t, and she’d be no worse off than she was already. She slowly opened the laptop and turned it towards him.

His eyebrows knit together. “How to break a deal with the devil?” He read the words aloud, but clearly didn’t comprehend them. “Rey, what are you getting at?”

“I sold my soul to the devil,” she said in a small voice.

Finn shook his head and put an arm around her. “Okay, Peanut. When you’re ready to tell me what’s up, we’ll talk. I won’t push anymore.”

Her phone dinged. “Ignore it,” she said to Finn.

“This thing has been going off all day. I’ll check for important messages. Is that okay?”

“Thank you.”

Finn rifled through her bag and unlocked her phone. She watched the muscles of his back go from relaxed to strained as he looked at the screen.

“You need to see this.”

A string of texts from Han awaited her.

_ Luke’s on his way to the hospital _

_ Listerine _

_ Listerine _

_ Fucking autocorrect _

_ L I S T E R _

_ Critical care _

_ Hurry _

_ Post op complications _

_ The fuck are you kid? _

\------

In sleep, Luke looked at least ten years younger. 

The morticians had made him more youthful still. His beard was trimmed, he wasn’t frowning. His hands were folded over a rosary she doubted he’d ever used. It had been made by the children in his parish’s youth group, shiny plastic beads and a shiny plastic Christ. He was wearing his vestments. Rey imagined herself telling him that he had to wear them all the time now; she also imagined the scowl that comment would draw.

“Oh, Luke,” she whispered.

She had met Father Skywalker her first day of uni, when he pronounced her name wrong.

Theology 102. He had grumbled each surname quietly, then assigned them seats alphabetically. He had said every name correctly, even those of exchange students. Then-- “Nit-ko?”

“Er, that’s me, but it’s not pronounced like that. Rhymes with _ neat _ , not _ knit _.”

Luke had sighed heavily. “Pava?”

“Here! Looks like we’re neighbors, Neat-o.”

“Nit_ ko _. Rey.”

“I like Neat-o.”

“Quiet, Pava,” Luke had unenthusiastically chastised. And later: “Who knows the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer?” The students had all looked at one another in confusion, then in unison replied_ our father_. “No!” Luke had boomed. “You are going to learn it in Latin-- _Classical _Latin, not that Church nonsense-- and you are going to say it at the beginning of every class. Then you’re going to learn the Ave Maria. ‘Father, I love that Christmas song!’ Well, they screw it up. Words and pronunciation. You are going to learn your prayers so well that you will dream about them. Then we’re going to talk about Jesus, the socio-political environment in the Middle East when we’re pretty sure he existed, I’m going to tell you that you’re wrong about a lot of shit, you’ll take some tests, and then you can curse my name forever. But you will leave here knowing those prayers in Latin. Get out your syllabus.”

Rey smiled as the memory faded. She patted his cold hands. “Pater Noster, qui est in caelus… I still remember, Luke.” A rush of tears came pouring out of her. “I remember. And I guess I did dream about them, huh? But I remember so much more. All the books you got me to read, and drinking cocoa together, and the way you quirked your eyebrows when you were sad, and that time you accidentally said _ goddamn _ in front of another priest, and the look on your face when you were fired halfway through the semester, and… I know what I brought back now.” Sobs wracked her, and every breath she took burned. “You knew, didn’t you? That’s why you wanted me to come here. To-- to protect me from him. Right? I know what I brought back, and _ I don’t know how to get rid of it. _ And now you’re gone. You’re gone.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something glint. A shiny bit of laminate peeked out from under Luke’s pillow. Sniffling, Rey reached for it. It was the postcard she had given him, the one from Sárvár. She smiled through her tears; he had wanted to be buried with something from her. She turned the postcard over in her hand. There, on the left, was her name and the date she had signed. On the right, in Luke’s loopy handwriting, was a message with the same date.

_ Rey, _

_ No one’s ever really gone. _

_ Love, _

_ LS _

She hugged the postcard to her chest, careful not to crease it. 

\------

Exiting the cathedral, Rey had expected to find Kylo Ren lying in wait. 

Instead, she found Finn and Rose.

“Harold’s?” Rose asked.

Rey shook her head. “Not yet. Proper dinner first. I want to drink my feelings away, but I don’t want to do it on an empty stomach.”

“Hmm… Proper dinner?” Rose asked, linking arms with Rey. “Does that mean Indian takeaway at Finn and Poe’s?”

“You know me well, Tico.” Rey hooked her other arm into Finn’s.

“Let me text Poe real fast. Tell him to put trousers on,” Finn said.

“He doesn’t have to,” Rose said quickly.

Finn did a double-take. “What?”

“Just saying, Rey needs some cheering up…”

“She got over that crush ages ago. Like before she knew you.”

“...he’s got great legs…”

“How do you even know that? I’m not worried about our relationship or anything, but do I need to be worried?”

“Finn, you can appreciate a piece of art without wanting to hump it,” Rey deadpanned. 

They burst into laughter, and for a moment everything bad was forgotten. For a moment.

Rey felt what she could only describe as a tugging sensation in her head. She stiffened and walked with her friends, ruminating all the while. They mistook her silence for grief, and that suited her fine.

\------ 

Rey flushed the toilet. That was the third time she had thrown up. 

Being hungover sucked. Being drunk kind of sucked, too. But both of those were better than being in a normal, alert headspace. Drunk Rey didn’t think clearly about much of anything. Hungover Rey was in too much pain to think about anything except the pain and regret. Sleeping Rey was the ideal, completely unaware of everything and anything. She’d had no more dreams, and she prayed she never would.

She thought about praying a lot. She didn’t ever do it. Hell, even Luke had avoided praying when he could. Prayer wouldn’t do her any good. She couldn’t pray Kylo Ren away.

She wore a hat at all times now. A shower cap, a baseball hat, a handkerchief; Han said that anything the Catholic Church thought would protect women from demons in places of worship prior to Vatican II would be sufficient. While she slept, she fastened her hair covering to her head with pins. In the shower, she wore a hairnet and hoped it would be enough.

She gave up looking for ways to break the Contract and focused on defense. She looked up ways to protect oneself from evil magic, demonic or otherwise. Iron was a recurring theme, so she fastened an old nail on a chain and wore it as a necklace. Even one story about Asmodeus mentioned iron being a weakness of demons. 

She managed to work from home. Instead of taking calls, she did online real-time support. She took a pay cut, but it was worth it. Going out was too dangerous; he could surprise her outside. She didn’t leave the flat alone. 

She tried to ignore the looks her friends gave her. She didn’t want their pity or concern. She wanted to be free, and isolating was the only way to do that.

Rose stopped buying alcohol. If Rey wanted to drink, she said, she would have to come out. 

They thought she was depressed, grieving for Luke. Maybe she was depressed. She certainly did miss Luke. But this was more insidious. It was paranoia, the kind based in reality. _ Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re _ not _ out to get you _.

She wondered at her luck sometimes. Kylo had said she “looked like someone”. She had unknowingly been surrounded by people who knew him-- Han, Chewie, and, she suspected, Luke. Did her friends congregate to her because they knew he would eventually find her, or did he find her because they shared so many acquaintances? Had their first meeting even been coincidental? The way she remembered it, he was leaning against the Archives, looking almost asleep. He hadn’t been there when she’d gone in, had he?

It didn’t matter. It really didn’t fucking matter.

She took cold medicine, the kind designed to put you in a deep sleep. It worked surprisingly quickly.

\------

There was a hill. Perhaps crag was a better term for it; no grass grew there, nor any trees nor plants, and its slopes were steep and rocky. It had been verdant once, bustling with people clamoring for death and salvation. A series of earthquakes had rendered it brown and beige and broken, forever marred. 

Rey wasn’t sure how she knew this, but she knew it.

She wasn’t alone. There were many others at this hill, primarily women. They talked amongst themselves, not unhappily. Occasionally a pair of lovers would stroll by, hand-in-hand, whispering. Wind whipped at all of them, strong enough to topple rocks and make people grab one another for purchase. Oddly, they didn’t seem at all surprised or put off by this. Rey’s hand flew to her head; she was wearing a hat. Good. 

A man approached her, his steps strangely uneven beneath the formal robes he wore. Wizened and wrinkled, the man looked at her with something akin to judgement. His heavy, full white eyebrows met as he considered her a moment.

“You are Rey Nitko?”

“Yes,” she felt compelled to answer.

A rattling sound accompanied his words. “How many sexual partners have you had?”

Her jaw dropped. “None of your goddamn business,” she tried to say.

“Two,” she actually said. There was no time to be horrified; his questions kept coming, hissing from behind his puffy white beard, and her answers came out before she could even try to stop them.

“Have you engaged in sex acts other than intercourse?”

“Yes.”

“Have you acted on lustful desires with someone you did not love?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it feels good.”

“Has lust ever clouded your judgement?”

“Yes.”

All at once, she realized that she had never seen this crag before. She didn’t remember coming here. She took a step away from the man and his hypnotic voice, plugging her ears with her fingers. 

In a frenzy, she ran to the nearest woman. Brown-skinned and Amazonian, this warrior-queen half-smiled when Rey grabbed her arm and begged for help.

“He asked us all the same,” she said. “You can’t lie to him, but neither do your affirmative answers determine whether you stay here. He may send you deeper. Better to stay here.”

“Who are you? All of you?”

“I am Semiramis. I once ruled the Assyrian Empire when no one thought a woman could do so. Some like to depict me in glittering armor. Now…” She gestured at her body, at the dull pieces of metal protecting her vital organs. “There you will see Paris and Helen. Her hair used to shine, or so she says. Constantly. Paris assures her that she is still worth ten years of war and a thousand ships. We were all pretty things once, I suppose. Steel yourself. He’s got to judge you.”

The old man came towards her, and Rey saw now why his gait was so uneven: he didn’t have legs. Instead, he slithered on the tail of a rattlesnake. His face was entirely passive as he drew closer. She looked for somewhere to run, but it seemed that the people had tightened in a circle around her. These men in their unpolished armor, these women with their jewels that should be far brighter, were all in on whatever sick joke this was.

“As you aren’t dead,” the snake-man said, “I shall be gentle.”

He wrapped his rattlesnake tail around her once, twice. The pressure and constriction was enough to make her panic but not enough to hurt.

“Just the two, as He suspected. Better to have it done officially, though. That way there can be no messy arguments later. Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Minos. Be welcome here.” He unwound his tail and slithered away. The circle of people had dispersed.

_ Minos _ , Rey thought. _ That rings a bell. Something on Wikipedia? _

And it clicked. No shining sun, no polished armor, no glittering jewels. 

“A part where no thing gleams,” she said aloud. “I’m in Hell.”

\------

Rey woke up. 

The first thing she did was make sure she was wearing a hat.

The second thing she did was open her eyes.

The third thing she did was extricate herself from Kylo Ren’s lap. 

“Sleep well, beloved?” he asked, setting aside a book.

“Not really, no. I dreamed of Hell. I hate dreaming.” Remembering that Han had said Kylo couldn’t lie to her if she was wearing a hat, she decided to find out a few things. “Am I really your beloved?”

“Yes.”

“Since when?”

“Since you fell down the mountain. I liked you well enough before that. You talk in your sleep. And as I watched you sleep from across that manky hotel room, I thought you had woken up because you were talking so much. It was a bunch of nonsense, so I thought you had a head injury. I ran over only to find you still asleep. Then you started humming. I looked at you and realized you have freckles. Later, when you were awake, you tried to trick me into seeing you naked. That mischievous streak plus your stubbornness--”

“I get it,” Rey interrupted.

“You’re the one wearing a hat. I have to give fully honest answers.”

“Is that why my hat kept flying off my head whenever you were around?”

“Yes. I can cause gusts of wind. Any other questions?”

“Quite a few. All the stuff I read is conflicting. Numbers and titles and designations… It’s very confusing.”

“Let us save some time. I am a devil, not a demon. I am a king, not a prince. I rule the realm of Lust. I command armies, but there are well over seventy-two. I do not now, nor have I ever, had the head of anything but what you see now. I’ve also never had more than one head, and I don’t spit fire. I don’t have a cock’s leg. I do my best work in November. My favorite number is thirty-two. I don’t always do ‘evil’ things. That’s such a subjective term. Sometimes I’m helpful. I built the Temple willingly, you know. Like anyone, I’m complex. I have desires and a history and hopes for the future. But as soon as anyone hears my name...” He gestured noncommittally towards the murky sky. 

That murky sky, Rey noticed at long last, held no shining sun. Everything was in tints and shades of brown, rocky and jagged, and nothing would ever gleam here. The quake-sundered crag was behind her. The sinners were silent, the presence of their Lord holding them in awe and fear.

“It wasn’t a dream,” she said flatly.

“No,” Kylo replied. “Tell me something. What’s in a name?” He picked up his book and flipped through it disinterestedly: _ Romeo and Juliet _. “Was it worth it? The letters, the knowledge of your past? You told me once that names are the most important words we have. You said that names are everything. I shall let you in on a well-known, ill-kept secret. The Báthory line died out generations ago. It’s possible that you are a Nádasdy, but you cannot be a Báthory. Were the letters worth it? Was learning about your name worth the price?”

Rey laughed. She laughed until her throat was sore and there were tears in her eyes. She took the red scarf from Kylo’s neck, the brightest thing in this sepia world, and balled it up. She rested her head upon it and closed her eyes. She was still smiling when she fell into a dreamless sleep, lost in darkness and borne away on peals of hysterical laughter. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clarifications:  
Luke is a Catholic priest, and the Catholic Commandments are different than the Biblical ones (hence 7 being stealing here).  
There is a _possible_ descendant. His name is Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, but by his own admission his link to Countess Báthory is a "family legend". He is not recognized as issue, legitimate or illegitimate. He seems like a really cool guy and has even written an opera O.O
> 
> Citations (but not properly cited):  
I heavily drew from Kimberly L Craft's "Infamous Woman: The True Story of Countess Erzsébet Báthory." I also used Valentine Penrose's "The Bloody Countess", translated by Alexander Trocchi to a lesser extent, as it used more archaic and outdated information. Craft's book is an interesting read and contains the 32 letters plus one set of court transcripts.  
The last line of the fic is an homage to Frankenstein by MW Shelley.  
I borrowed from Dante's _Divine Comedy: Inferno_ for much of this chapter, as well as the Talmud and various religious sources that were piecemeal. 
> 
> Once again I'd like to thank everyone at the [Reylo Fanfiction Anthology](https://reylofanfictionanthology.tumblr.com) for being remarkable human beings. Read the entire collection! I'm working my way through it and have enjoyed every story so far.
> 
> Update 28 Aug 2020: the fabulous Laura corrected some of my Croatian. I initially got it secondhand and she’s a native speaker. Many thanks to her! 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed "Where No Thing Gleams". Please leave a contribution in the little box!  
Shirtless Kylo for anyone who catches the "It's Not the Future" reference XD

**Author's Note:**

> HUGE thanks to the following:
> 
> My beta, [Cake](https://cunning-crackslips.tumblr.com), who took the time to read this monster even though she was on vacation *and* provided the Hungarian.  
She has asked to be called "Darth Beta", so there you go bb ;)  
Mod [Viv](https://shelikespretties.tumblr.com) who did the first round of edits and made the beautiful Mystery Moodboard!  
Mod [Alexandra](https://politicalmamaduck.tumblr.com), who did the second round of edits and spared you numerous ellipses and so many superfluously italicized words.  
The entire [RFFA ](https://reylofanfictionanthology.tumblr.com)team and all of the writers for being so friendly and supportive and for making me smile. Every one of you is a superhero <3
> 
> As always, if you see something incorrect in either language/translation or fact, please let me know in a comment. I trust ~Darth Beta, but everyone makes mistakes.  
Full citations will be listed at the end of Chapter 3.


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